Posted on 05/03/2006 6:09:39 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
AL-QAEDA plotter Zacarias Moussaoui shouted "America you lost" overnight after a jury rejected a death sentence against him over the September 11 attacks.
Earlier, the jury told Judge Leonie Brinkema that it had decided on a sentence of life in jail without parole. "The jury has found the defendant should be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release," said court spokesman Edward Adams speaking on the steps of the court in Alexandria, Virginia, in the suburbs of Washington.
Mr Adams said that the jury verdict form did not indicate how many jurors voted for life in prison and how many in favour of death, if any.
The jury had to unanimously agree a verdict to recommend that Moussaoui be sentenced to death.
Prosecutors had argued that Moussaoui's "lethal lies" while in jail prior to the attacks gave his fellow Al-Qaeda conspirators the chance to pull off the spectacular strikes on Washington and New York.
But his lawyers rejected that claim as overblown, and transcripts of closed hearings released late Tuesday show that their doubts about Moussaoui's truthfulness were partially shared by Judge Brinkema.
"I still think that Moussaoui was not accurate in a lot of what he said about how much he knew about what was going to happen with which particular buildings and when," Judge Brinkema said in the hearing on April 21.
During his trial Moussaoui claimed in blockbuster testimony that he knew the World Trade Centre in New York was a key target on September 11.
He also claimed he would have flown a hijacked passenger jet into the White House on that fateful day, had he not been arrested weeks earlier.
But his claim conflicted with all previous knowledge of the strikes on New York and Washington, as well as with his own earlier admission that he was to have been part of a second wave of attacks.
The defence contended that he is a caricature of a terrorist, was rejected by the "real" Al-Qaeda plotters and exaggerated his role in the group.
Defence attorneys also pleaded with jurors not to make a martyr of Moussaoui and said he should instead be saddled with the "long, slow death of a common criminal" in a maximum-security prison.
Yes he can but I think the more just decision and the better decision with respect to the War on Terror is DEATH!
And I'm sure there are prisoners who will be more than happy to remind him everyday how he lost!
Probably true. Death may be too good for him!
Why was Moussaoui not tried by a military tribunal?
How can one individual be so supremely arrogant as to think that his action made any difference?
He will end up like Goegan - the pedophile priest that was murdered in prison.
Put him in the general prison population and we'll see....
First time I agree with a murdering terrorist. He's right. He'll be on the streets in less than 8 years.
If we could let him marinate in pig's blood and camel dung in an isolation cell for the next 40 years then I might not be so disgusted by the fact that he did not get his well-deserved death sentence. Alas, I fear that ACLU lawyers will devote themselves to harassing the Federal Bureau of Prisons on his behalf, and he will probably get better conditions than he deserves.
His statement has great motivational value--just not for his team.
Hopefully they'll get him cancer.
He wanted to die - a martyr. Didn't get his wish.
And you'd be wrong. There is no federal parole.
Hopefully he is currently buying a large container of KY
Why was he not shot by executive order?
A military tribunal is not a trial like a court-martial. All a tribunal does is establish that certain facts are present in a given case.
From 9:03AM on 9/11/01, it was clear (and thus not requiring of a tribunal) that ZM was an enemy soldier making war on the US, out of uniform and behind our lines.
Nothing else was required to kill him.
Actually, he should be placed in a maximum security penitentury, and all the inmates should be tipped off as to who he is.
The prison system in the US has an odd code within. Just ask Jeffery Dahmer (oh, wait, he's dead ).
You never know. Maybe he'll get to be treated to prison justice. With broom handles and other non-Muslim manners of death.
He'll be traded for the hostages whose capture was just guaranteed by this verdict.
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