Prosecution asks jury for death sentence for Moussaoui
(New York Times)
Updated: 2006-03-07 09:37

A federal prosecutor on Monday asked a jury to sentence Zacarias Moussaoui to death, saying that his willful decision to conceal his knowledge of the Sept. 11 terrorist plot when he was arrested weeks earlier makes him responsible for the thousands of deaths on that day.

A file photo of Zacarias Moussaoui [AFP]

A court-appointed lawyer for Mr. Moussaoui told the jury they could not order the execution of a man on what was no more than a supposition: that if had he revealed his knowledge of al Qaeda's interest in flying planes into public buildings, U.S. authorities would have prevented the Sept. 11 plot.

Mr. Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan heritage, is the only person to be charged in the United States with direct involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. He was in jail at the time, having been arrested three weeks earlier in Minnesota on immigration charges while he was taking flight lessons.

He has pleaded guilty to six conspiracy counts and admitted that he was taking flight training to be available for an al Qaeda campaign to fly aircraft into buildings. But he has insisted that he was not part of the Sept. 11 plot and does not deserve to die.

Because he has pleaded guilty, his trial is solely over whether he is to be executed by lethal injection at a federal prison in Indiana or spend the rest of his life in prison.

In their opening statements Monday, lawyers for the government and for Mr. Moussaoui presented starkly different portraits of his importance to al Qaeda's plans to wage war on the United States.

Robert Spencer, an assistant United States attorney, told the jury that he was "in the thick of the plot" but because he had been arrested, his contribution to the attacks "in the end was to lie so his al Qaeda brothers could go forward."

Mr. Spencer said that if Mr. Moussaoui had told a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent in August what he knew about al Qaeda's plans, the bureau and the F.A.A. would have gone on full alert and taken steps to hunt down the hijackers and increased security at the nation's airports.

He said that documents recovered from Mr. Moussaoui's home after Sept. 11 provided valuable clues that would have led directly to many of the 19 hijackers of that day.

"He killed the 9/11 victims as surely as if he had been at the controls in one of those airplanes," Mr. Spencer said.

Edward J. MacMahon, one of the court-appointed lawyers who is conducting the defense over Mr. Moussaoui's objections, said that it was true that his client had proudly proclaimed himself a member of al Qaeda and said he was planning to fly a plane into the White House at the orders of Osama bin Laden.

But Mr. MacMahon attacked the government's argument that Mr. Moussaoui could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks if he had spoken truthfully when he was arrested. He cited the official commission that investigated the attacks and found the government had several indications of al Qaeda's plans before that day. The report found that authorities never fully appreciated the significance of some of the leads.

"You can't judge him to get revenge for 9-11," Mr. MacMahon told the jury. "You can't make him some substitute for Osama bin Laden. And you can't make him a scapegoat for what government officials did not do" to prevent the attacks.

Even if Mr. Moussaoui had not lied, he said, there is no reason to believe that authorities would have acted quickly on that information any more than they acted on other leads. What officials would have done is speculative, he said, adding that Mr. Moussaoui was regarded as unreliable even by his al Qaeda colleagues.

"No one should be executed on such flimsy evidence, not even a member of al Qaeda," he said.

Throughout it all, Mr. Moussaoui sat back quietly in a chair to the side, slowly stroking his beard, often staring intently at the court audience which included about 10 family members of victims of Sept. 11.

The jury that will decide Mr. Moussaoui's fate was whittled down Monday to 17 people who will hear the case over the next several weeks. When it comes time to deliberate, 12 of that group will decide Mr. Moussaoui's fate. The jurors, 7 woman and 10 men, are all from the Northern Virginia area.Under the federal death penalty law, the jury's first task is to decide whether the conspirary crimes to which Mr. Moussaoui has pleaded resulted in the death of anybody. If the jurors are unanimous on that issue, they will move on to consider aggravating factors, like the severity of the crime, and mitigating factors. If they find the aggravating factors outweigh any mitigating factors, they then vote on whether to recommend the death penalty. If they do so, the judge is obliged to impose it.

In addition to the argument that Mr. Moussaoui played no part in the Sept. 11 conspiracy, his lawyers are expected to argue that he is mentally unstable, a potentially mitigating factor. The lawyers have arranged for a psychologist to testify that Mr. Moussaoui's behavior, notably his requent outbursts in previous court appearances, show him to be suffering a mental disorder, "most likely schizophrenia" that began with his experiencing racism as a youth in France.

The government, for its part, plans to emphasize the tragic losses of the Sept. 11 attacks. Prosecutors have prepared more than 40 family members to testify about the devastating impact on their lives.

The trial will include statements from six al Qaeda officials in secret United States custody including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Moussaoui's actual role in the Sept. 11 attacks has remained an intriguing mystery to investigators. The official commission that studied the attacks concluded that al Qaeda leaders may have considered using him as "a potential substitute pilot" on Sept. 11 because of friction among other participants, but that his arrest scuttled that possibility. The commission also speculated that he may have been meant to be part of a second wave of attacks and noted that al Qaeda spent some $50,000 on his training.