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Moussaoui jurors weigh death sentence in court

27 avril 2006, 20:00

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Jurors entered a fourth day of deliberations here over whether Al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui should be executed for his role in the September 11 terror attacks in the United States.

The jury reached no conclusion after they deliberated all day Wednesday, huddled in a small room off the seventh floor courtroom which hosted the six-week trial.

Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent who pleaded guilty in April 2005, is the only person tried in the United States over the September 11 terror attacks.

The jury ruled him “eligible” for execution on April 3, accepting prosecution arguments that his “lethal lies” while in jail on August 2001, gave cover for his Al-Qaeda to pull off the September 11 attacks.

Up to now the jury has weighed Moussaoui’s fate for 16 hours over three days. If the jury, working off a 42-page verdict form, cannot unanimously agree on a death sentence, the Al-Qaeda plotter will be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of release.

Moussaoui’s mother, who flew in from France Wednesday to hear the verdict, lashed out at the US justice system.“For me, there is no justice,” Aicha el-Wafi said, complaining that her 37-year-old son had been tried over fiery rhetoric and had not committed an actual act which claimed lives.

“Justice is seeking evidence and showing what he has done, not what he has said,” she told reporters outside her hotel here, in the Washington D.C. suburbs.“The worst has already been done,” she added. “I ask for facts. Up to now, I have not seen facts.”

El-Wafi said that she “was wrecked inside” when Moussaoui said “death to Jews, death to Americans” during his trial. His statements were a result of his “suffering” after four years of in isolation in jail.“He’s my son, and I love him,” the mother of four said.

“I love him more than the others now that he has been accused.”Judge Leonie Brinkema sent the jury from court on Monday after prosecutors said death was the only just punishment for Moussaoui, whom they branded a “cold blooded killer.”

“If not this case, then when?” asked prosecutor David Novak in closing arguments, demanding justice for September 11 victims.But the defense has argued that Moussaoui had nothing to do with September 11, despite his sensational claim he had been tapped to pilot a jet into the White House that day, helped by British ‘shoebomber’ Richard Reid.

Defense lawyer Gerald Zerkin has portrayed his client as a delusional paranoid schizophrenic, asked jurors to show “courage” by sending Moussaoui to prison.

“He wants you to sentence him to death, he is baiting you to do it,” Zerkin said, urging jurors to condemn Moussaoui to the “long slow death of a common criminal,” and not the glorious jihadist’s demise he yearned for.

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