Moussaoui is given life sentence

A jury in Virginia determined yesterday that Zacarias Moussaoui, the al-Qa’ida conspirator who pleaded guilty to charges connected with the terror attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001, should be sentenced to life in prison without parole, rejecting the prosecution request that he should be executed.

The decision, reached after seven days of deliberation by the jury of nine men and three women, was read before silent courtroom and shortly afterwards by a court spokesman before a scrum of reporters and television cameras outside a federal court in Alexandria outside Washington DC.

The jury’s verdict in the penalty phase is binding on Judge Leonie Brinkema who will announce the sentence of life imprisonment in the courthouse this morning.

Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent who voiced contempt for the proceedings throughout, had told the court he was meant to fly a fifth plane into the White House. He is likely to be sent to America’s super-maximum prison in Florence, Colorado, where inmates are subjected to non-stop solitary confinement.
Surprise was the first reaction of many observers of the long trial that the jury rejected death for Moussaoui. The verdict undoubtedly represented a major disappointment for government prosecutors, in particular as Moussaoui remains the only individual tried so far in relation to the 9/11 attacks, which took the lives of almost 3,000 people.

The jury had concluded in late March that Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty.Prosecutors sought to dramatise the horrors of 9/11, bringing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to testify in court as well as family members of some of those killed.

For some family members, the conviction and now the sentencing of Moussaoui may offer a small degree of closure. The jury had already determined that Moussaoui, who was in prison on immigration violations on the day of the attacks, had lied to the FBI about his ties to al-Qa’ida and about the 9/11 conspiracy.

Had he told the truth the attacks of one month later might have been averted.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited