Opening its argument that Zacarias Moussaoui be executed, the U.S. government asserted Monday that the terrorist conspirator “did his part as a loyal al-Qaida soldier; and caused the deaths of nearly 3,000 people by failing to tell what he knew of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
As Moussaoui stroked his beard and families of September 11 victims watched on closed-circuit TV, prosecutor Rob Spencer evoked the horror of that day and laid blame on the only man charged in the attacks.
“He lied so the plot could proceed unimpeded,” Spencer asserted. “With that lie, he caused the deaths of nearly 3,000 people. He rejoiced in the death and destruction.”
He went on: “Had Mr. Moussaoui just told the truth, it would all have been different.”
A school teacher, a veteran of the first Gulf War and an Iranian-born Sunni Muslim woman are among the jurors who will decide whether Moussaoui is put to death or imprisoned for life.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema impaneled 18 jurors and alternates in 90 minutes Monday. One who appeared upset at being chosen was excused, meaning the trial will proceed with 12 jurors and five alternates instead of six.
Moussaoui, a 37-year-old French citizen, has acknowledged his loyalty to the al-Qaida terrorist network and his intent to commit acts of terrorism, but denies any prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 plot.
Frequently ejected from the courtroom earlier because of his outbursts against his court-appointed attorneys, Moussaoui sat quietly through the opening of his trial, gazing often at the jurors or the gallery.
At the end of the morning hearing, he spoke to one member of his defense team: “Just to let you know, you’re not my lawyer, thanks a lot.”
His mother, Aicha el-Wafi, spoke up for her son in a CNN interview. “All they can have against him is the things that he said, the words that he has used,” she said, “but actual acts that he committed, there aren’t any.”
But D. Hamilton Peterson, who lost his father Donald and stepmother Jean on hijacked Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, declared, “I want accountability.”
“I believe Moussaoui is an excellent candidate for the death penalty,” he said outside the courtroom. “He is nothing less than a mass murderer.”
The jury included a high school math teacher who has traveled widely in the Middle East, a Sunni Muslim woman who was born in Iran and a man who served as a Navy lieutenant in the Gulf during the Desert Storm war with Iraq in 1990-91.
Only two of the 21 prospective jurors with some connection to the Sept. 11 attacks made it on the final panel of 17.
One was a woman whose brother-in-law works for the New York City Police Department and helped with rescue at the World Trade Center. The math teacher had a more remote connection: The fathers of two of her pupils are firefighters who responded to the September 11 crash at the Pentagon. She helped freshmen make a quilt to give to the fire department.
One woman who was seated said earlier that she would tend to assume an al-Qaida member is evil. Jurors also included a mental health researcher, a man whose father retired from the CIA just before 9/11, a man who serves in the military reserves and a federal government employee who said he thought there was a lack of communication between the FBI and CIA before 9/11.
The defense and prosecution, whittling down prospects from a pool of more than 80, both managed to avoid the jurors they objected to the most.
After the jurors were seated and sworn in, one asked to speak to the judge and after a bench conference, she was excused for unspecified personal reasons. That left 10 men and seven women to hear the case.
Members of the jury pool generally kept their eyes away from Moussaoui and those who did not make the final cut appeared relieved. “I’m so happy,” one woman said as she walked out.
Those selected will not know who is a juror and who is an alternate until late in the trial.
The jury pool already had been qualified to serve during a two-week process in which prospects were quizzed individually by Brinkema and filled out 50-page questionnaires asking their views about the death penalty, al-Qaida, the FBI and their reactions to the September 11 attacks.
Moussaoui pleaded guilty in April to conspiring with al-Qaida to hijack planes and commit other crimes. The trial will determine Moussaoui’s punishment, and only two options are available: death or life in prison.
Relatives of the victims of the September 11 attacks gathered Monday at a federal courthouse to watch a closed-circuit broadcast of a sentencing trial that will determine whether Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged in the United States for those attacks, would be put to death.
“After 4 1/2 long years, this is our only attempt to get a scintilla of justice,” said Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son, Christian Regenhard, died in the attack.
In the years since the towers fell, the families have felt rage, grief, loss, but never the sense of satisfaction that might come if someone is held responsible for the crime.
“What does accountability feel like? That’s what eluded the families of the victims,” Regenhard said before the proceeding.
“They all got away with murder, so we only have him left,” she said of Moussaoui.
Some of the victims’ families arrived at the courthouse in New York - near where the World Trade Center once stood - carrying photographs or buttons with images of their loved ones. Many also held scarves or other items emblazoned with the American flag.
Barry Zelman, whose brother Kennth Zelman, 36, died on the 99th floor of the Oracle Corp., said some part of him wanted to see Moussaoui on trial in person.
“He’s al Qaida in the flesh,” said Zelman, adding that he fully expected watching the trial would be difficult.
“There’s going to be a lot of anger, a lot of emotion,” he said.
Zelman and others said it was ridiculous to think the trial would provide families some kind of closure or sense of justice.
Along with the New York courthouse, the trial is also being shown in Boston, Central Islip, New York, Newark, New Jersey and Philadelphia
“For 4 1/2 years when we were trying to get the independent investigation, we had a lot of questions that weren’t answered because of this trial,” said Mindy Kleinberg in New Jersey, whose husband died at the trade center. “Part of it is trying to gain a better understanding of what happened on 9/11, so we’re hoping that comes forward because of this.”
“As far as I’m concerned, this guy murdered my husband as much as if he had the controls in his hands and flown the plane into the building, which is what his intent was,” said Christie Coombs, a Massachusetts mother of three who lost her husband, Jeff.
Six witnesses, all federal agents, have been called by the prosecution, and the first may give evidence this afternoon after opening statements. One of the key characters in the trial is expected to be Harry Samit, the Minneapolis-based FBI agent who first investigated Moussaoui after his arrest in August 2001.
Mr Samit has also been called by the defence and is expected to shed light on the bureaucracy and miscommunications that characterised the intelligence failure of the FBI and the CIA before the attacks.
The trial of Moussaoui, initially dubbed the "20th hijacker", has flitted between civilian and military courts since his arrest more than four years ago. The case has been slowed by the weight of classified material needed as evidence.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, told US investigators that Moussaoui knew nothing of the plot, while Ramzi Binalshibh, another organiser, has admitted wiring large amounts of money to Moussaoui in the months before the attack, to help him prepare as a possible substitute for one of the eventual hijackers, who was considering pulling out of the plot.
Moussaoui was arrested in August 2001 after his instructor at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, became suspicious of his desire to learn to take-off and land a Boeing 747 with no intention of gaining a pilot's licence. Moussaoui is reported to have told his instructor it was an "ego thing".
After finding $32,000 in Moussaoui's bank account and evidence of extremist, jihadi beliefs, the FBI in Minneapolis wanted to report Moussaoui as a possible hijacker to the Federal Aviation Administration - but the move was blocked by FBI Headquarters.
The argument over the handling of the Moussaoui case led the upper echelons of the FBI to accuse Minneapolis field office of "spinning up" their reports, according to the 9/11 Commission, an accusation that led Mr Samit's supervisor to inform Washington - before the 9/11 atrocity occurred - that he was "trying to keep someone from taking a plane and crashing into the World Trade Centre".
Ultimately, details of Moussaoui's arrest and his recent history - he had spent time in Pakistan and Malaysia, where he met other 9/11 plotters, as well as Paris and London - were put on the desk of George Tenet, the Director of the CIA, on August 23, 2001.
A cable was wired to Paris the following day asking for information about a possible "suicide hijacker". The inquiry did not receive a response until after the attacks.
