Washington – A juror in the death-penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui said Thursday that some members of the panel decided that the al-Qaeda conspirator should not be executed because he was a bit player in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and did not kill anyone that day.
“He wasn’t necessarily part of the 9/11 operation,” said the juror, who spoke about the jury’s deliberations on condition of anonymity. “His role in 9/11 was actually minor,” said the juror, who voted for a sentence of life in prison even though he considered Moussaoui “a despicable character” and someone who “mocks and taunts family members whose loved ones died.”
Moussaoui did just that one final time Thursday, when he was formally sentenced at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va. – a day after the jury rejected the death penalty.
In a final display of vitriol, the only person convicted in the United States in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon confronted the families of the victims and the judge he has spent years insulting.
Even after U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema instructed him not to make a political speech, Moussaoui, 37, leaned forward in his chair, his lips touching a microphone and hissed: “God curse America, and God save Osama bin Laden! You will never get him!”
Brinkema replied with a smile, noting that Moussaoui had yelled “America, you lost! … I won!” after the jury delivered its verdict.
“Mr. Moussaoui, if you look around this courtroom today, every person in this room, when this proceeding is over, will leave this courtroom, and they are free to go anyplace they want,” she said before pronouncing the mandatory life sentence. “They can go outside, and they can feel the sun, they can smell fresh air, … but when you leave this courtroom, you go back into custody. In terms of winners and losers, it is quite clear who won yesterday and who lost yesterday.”
“That was my choice!” Moussaoui interrupted.
“It was hardly your choice,” Brinkema answered, barely looking up as she said that the verdict – and the more than four years the government spent bringing the complex case to trial – represented “a great win for the American people.”
“You came here to be a martyr and to die in a big bang of glory,” Brinkema said. “But to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, you will die with a whimper.”
And with that, the judge left the courtroom, and the case was finally over. Moussaoui, who pleaded guilty last year to conspiring with al-Qaeda in the Sept. 11 attacks, was expected to be transferred soon from the Alexandria jail to the nation’s only “super maximum” security prison, in Florence, Colo., where he will live out his days in solitary confinement.
The juror who spoke Thursday said a number of jurors thought Moussaoui “wasn’t fully aware of the 9/11 plot. He may have been part of a parallel operation, a second wave of attacks, but he wasn’t anywhere close to flying a plane on 9/11.”
He said nine jurors decided that Moussaoui’s dysfunctional childhood was a mitigating factor in part because a number of them read a book by Moussaoui’s brother, which was entered into evidence, in the jury room.
But he said that was far less significant to the final decision than the questions about Moussaoui’s Sept. 11 role.
In the federal courtroom Thursday before the sentence was formally pronounced, Brinkema asked whether any Sept. 11 victims wanted to speak.
There was a rustling in the third row, where family members have sat since the trial began two months ago.
Rosemary Dillard, whose husband, Eddie, was killed Sept. 11, walked to the podium, turned toward Moussaoui and said angrily: “I want you, Mr. Moussaoui, to know that you have wrecked my life. … With you, I feel nothing but disgust.”
Moussaoui stared back impassively.
Lisa Dolan, who lost her husband, U.S. Navy Capt. Bob Dolan, at the Pentagon, kept her comment succinct: “There is still one final judgment day.”
When Moussaoui took the stand for his final statement before sentencing, he glared at the family members and said, “You have an amount of hypocrisy beyond any belief. Your humanity is a very selective humanity.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Spencer rose to object, saying Moussaoui should not be allowed to make a political speech. Brinkema agreed, but Moussaoui continued in the same vein.
“I fight for my belief, and I’m amujahedeen, and you think that you own the world, and I would prove you wrong,” Moussaoui said. “We will come back another day.” But Brinkema had the last word.
“The rest of your life you will spend in prison,” Brinkema said as Moussaoui tried to talk over her one last time.
But the judge, a trained singer, spoke louder, drowning him out.
“You will never again get a chance to speak, and that is an appropriate and fair ending. This case is now concluded.”
