Posted on 05/04/2006 10:52:03 AM PDT by LouAvul
PARIS - Zacarias Moussaoui's mother said Thursday a life sentence for her son was more cruel than putting him to death because now he will "live like a rat in a hole."
Aicha El Wafi, who returned to France earlier this week, said the trial was a masquerade that did not prove her son's guilt, and she accused the French government of not fighting hard enough for him, saying it did not want to oppose the United States.
El Wafi, dressed in black, was emotional and nervous as she spoke with reporters a day after the jury in Alexandria, Va., decided to send him to prison for life without a chance of parole, and she repeated over and over, "This is terrible."
"I share the suffering and the pain of the parents of the victims. I'm with them," she said.
"I feel like a part of myself is dead, buried with my son, who is going to be buried all of his life at 37 years old for things that he didn't do. Because he spoke too much," El Wafi said.
She called her son a scapegoat, adding that the life sentence imposed for his role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was worse than the death penalty.
"Now he is going to die in little doses," she said. "He is going to live like a rat in a hole. What for? They are so cruel, they were wrong to want his head. They should have gone all the way to the end if they were capable."
"My son will be buried alive because France didn't dare contradict the Americans," El Wafi said.
"I don't share the ideas and the words of my son in the court," she said, but added that it was "because of his words, his color, his race, that he was sentenced to life."
El Wafi's lawyer, Patrick Baudouin, expressed relief that the jury did not decide on the death penalty, and vowed a legal battle to bring Moussaoui home.
"They wanted to make the little soldier Moussaoui into a perpetrator of the Sept. 11 attacks," Baudouin said. "He had no blood on his hands."
French authorities said they may ask the United States to let Moussaoui serve his life sentence in a France prison.
France and the United States are linked by two conventions on transferring convicts, and "an eventual request for transferring Mr. Zacarias Moussaoui would be studied in this framework," Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said.
Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent, was the only person charged in the United States in those attacks. A jury decided not to impose the death penalty.
After the sentencing, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said: "I asked my services and our embassy in Washington, who offered their consular protection and who followed day to day the unfolding of the process, to continue to remain very attentive to the situation of Zacarias Moussaoui."
He did not comment on the verdict itself, but said: "The French authorities have had the occasion, several times, to restate their constant opposition to capital punishment."
A ministry spokesman said no decision on transferring Moussaoui would be made until U.S. authorities "define the conditions of his sentence."
France, which abolished capital punishment in 1981, had demanded that none of the information it provided for the U.S. case against Moussaoui be used to seek execution.
And the problem is...........?
That he shouldn't live as well as a rat in a hole?
She's tryin' that reverse psychology on us. I saw that once in a movie.
You mean his mother's been pushing for a sentence that she considers to be worse than death? Some mom.
She's been promised a "Martyr's Payout" when he dies.
I thought solitary for the rest of his life would be the best case.
If he isn't crazy now, he will be.
This sentence is like being bt></d alive.
I am outraged, OUTRAGED that he will live as well as a rat in a hole.
Well, the jury did say she was a real meanie to him when he was growing up.
"This sentence is like being bt></d alive.
Whoops....buried alive
If only that were true.
Ma'am, many of us would rather he be executed, or handed over to the families of those murdered that dreadful day, but the jury has decided to spare his poor excuse for a life.
Strange here. Doesn't share ideas of son but would rather see him dead than alive?
Population: Zacharias Moussaoui
Growing up with THIS mother was considered a fate worse than death.
Jurors took his childhood into account in sparing his life.
She is as crazy as he is. the guy admitted he was partner in the act. they should have arrested her for birthing such a POS.
Let's be kind and give him an option.
A room with a rope.
Anytime he decides life without the possibility of parole is too cruel, he can use to rope to convert his life sentence to the death penalty...
as a lawyer representing rats, I resent the comparison of ZM to my clients..
Good. Let him rot in that hole. Maybe he'll martyr himself, and save us US Taxpayers some dough.
Yep. His words calling for the DEATH of those who are sub-humans in his supremacist eyes.
Let him use a pig's intestine.
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