Moussaoui faces death over Sept 11

ALEXANDRIA – A US jury ruled on Monday that would-be al Qaeda suicide pilot Zacarias Moussaoui is eligible for execution, deciding his lies cost lives in the September 11 attacks.

“You will never get my blood, God curse you all,” Moussaoui, the only person tried in the United States over the deadly 2001 strikes, shouted at the public benches as he was led from court. A new phase of the trial, with harrowing testimony from survivors and relatives of some of the nearly 3 000 people who perished, will begin tomorrow, to decide whether the sentence is carried out.Judge Leonie Brinkema pierced the suffocating tension of the seventh floor courtroom, in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, as she read out the verdict.She declared the jury had found against Moussaoui on three capital counts of conspiracy to commit terrorism, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and conspiracy to destroy aircraft.”Ladies and gentlemen, are these …your unanimous verdicts?” Brinkema asked, drawing nods from the nine men and three women who had deliberated for 19 hours stretched across three days.Moussaoui, who stunned the trial last week by declaring he had been picked to fly a hijacked airliner into the White House on September 11, 2001, sat in a trance-like state, muttering what seemed to be a prayer as the verdict was read out, a smile playing across his lips.Before he was led into court, wearing a green prison jumpsuit and white-knit cap, Moussaoui had chanted loudly in an adjacent holding cell.”Allah Akbar” (God is great) and other, undecipherable shouts were heard.Relatives of some of the September 11 victims, who sat for days watching court testimony, were in the third row of the courtroom.”We couldn’t have a better closing, for all of us, even those who don’t believe in the death penalty,” said Rosemary Dillard, who lost her husband Eddy in the attacks.”We know he is guilty.”Abraham Scott broke down as he remembered his wife Janice, who perished at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.”It’s very emotional …it’s hard to describe.I thought I would be delighted but I wasn’t.”I don’t think Moussaoui is totally to blame, even though I think he deserves death.I equally blame the government.”Lorie Van Auken, a 9/11 widow from New Jersey, said she did not think Moussaoui should be eligible for death.”I don’t think he contributed to what happened on September 11th.I think he’s been scapegoated,” she said.- Nampa-AFPA new phase of the trial, with harrowing testimony from survivors and relatives of some of the nearly 3 000 people who perished, will begin tomorrow, to decide whether the sentence is carried out.Judge Leonie Brinkema pierced the suffocating tension of the seventh floor courtroom, in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, as she read out the verdict.She declared the jury had found against Moussaoui on three capital counts of conspiracy to commit terrorism, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and conspiracy to destroy aircraft.”Ladies and gentlemen, are these …your unanimous verdicts?” Brinkema asked, drawing nods from the nine men and three women who had deliberated for 19 hours stretched across three days.Moussaoui, who stunned the trial last week by declaring he had been picked to fly a hijacked airliner into the White House on September 11, 2001, sat in a trance-like state, muttering what seemed to be a prayer as the verdict was read out, a smile playing across his lips.Before he was led into court, wearing a green prison jumpsuit and white-knit cap, Moussaoui had chanted loudly in an adjacent holding cell.”Allah Akbar” (God is great) and other, undecipherable shouts were heard.Relatives of some of the September 11 victims, who sat for days watching court testimony, were in the third row of the courtroom.”We couldn’t have a better closing, for all of us, even those who don’t believe in the death penalty,” said Rosemary Dillard, who lost her husband Eddy in the attacks.”We know he is guilty.”Abraham Scott broke down as he remembered his wife Janice, who perished at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.”It’s very emotional …it’s hard to describe.I thought I would be delighted but I wasn’t.”I don’t think Moussaoui is totally to blame, even though I think he deserves death.I equally blame the government.”Lorie Van Auken, a 9/11 widow from New Jersey, said she did not think Moussaoui should be eligible for death.”I don’t think he contributed to what happened on September 11th.I think he’s been scapegoated,” she said.- Nampa-AFP