With Judgment, Moussaoui Is Silenced at Last

For all his taunts, jeers and bombast, Zacarias Moussaoui did not get the last word.

When he was formally sentenced Thursday for his role as a Sept. 11 conspirator, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema had the final say. And she delivered it poetically.

“You came here to be a martyr, and to die in a great big bang of glory,” the judge told him. “But to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper. The rest of your life you will spend in prison.”

Moussaoui tossed out some last-minute epithets as he was led away. He said he would be “liberated” before President Bush left office. He said he was a soldier of God and the U.S. was an “army of Satan.”

Although his earlier diatribes during his two-month sentencing trial sometimes sounded smart or witty, his threats Thursday rang hollow.

Wafting over the courtroom in their place were not only the judge’s stern admonishments, but also those of three victims who stepped up to the microphone and said they were glad to see Moussaoui go.

He will live out his days at the federal maximum-security penitentiary, dubbed Supermax, in Florence, Colo. Now 37, the French Moroccan could live 30 or 40 more years, according to experts who testified at his trial.

On Wednesday, a federal jury of nine men and three women voted to spare his life instead of ordering his execution. That prompted Moussaoui to boast that “America lost.... I won!”

The judge threw his words back at him Thursday. He was wrong, she said. The victor was the American judicial system.

Moussaoui, who has spent 4 1/2 years in custody, was arrested three weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks. He has said that he was sent to the U.S. to learn how to fly and that his mission was to pilot a fifth hijacked plane into the White House.

Whether that is true or not, Moussaoui is the only person to be prosecuted in this country in connection with the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history -- when four planes slammed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pa.

In the first order of business Thursday, defense attorney Alan H. Yamamoto told the court that Moussaoui had refused to discuss the pre-sentence report other than to say he wished there was more in it about his apartment in France, his travels to Chechnya and an old friend in England.

Robert A. Spencer, the chief prosecutor, rose next. He said that the day should be about the victims, to remember the dead, all 2,972 of them. Everyone during the trial was touched by their suffering, he said, “except that man, Zacarias Moussaoui.”

“He listened without remorse and reveled in the pain and despair of those victims who testified. And it is impossible for the rest of us to fathom his hatred and his venom and his murderous intent,” Spencer said.

Yamamoto agreed. Speaking for the defense, he said: “We believe the sentence is a proper sentence, that he should spend the rest of his life incarcerated for his participation in this conspiracy.”

A row of seats in the middle of the courtroom was set off for the victims’ relatives, and three of them took up the judge’s offer to address the court. But they only had words for Moussaoui.

Rosemary Dillard lost her husband, Eddie, on the plane that hit the Pentagon. “I want you, Mr. Moussaoui, to know how you wrecked my life,” she said. “You wrecked my career. You took the most important person in my life from me.”

Abraham Scott’s wife died at the Pentagon. Staring at the Al Qaeda operative, he warned Moussaoui that although he had cheated death, his leader, Osama bin Laden, would not. “I look forward to bringing your colleague, whatever you call him, your God or whatever, Bin Laden, to justice in this courtroom,” Scott said. “And he will be here, trust me.”

When that day comes, Scott added, “I’m hoping and praying that he will be put to death.”

Lisa Dolan, widow of Navy Capt. Bob Dolan, who also perished at the Pentagon, had the least to say to Moussaoui. But her words were the most pointed: “Only one thing,” she told him. “There is still one final Judgment Day.”

Permitted by law to speak at his sentencing, Moussaoui began to mock the three victims, but the judge cut him off. He mocked the United States instead, as he had throughout the trial.

“You have branded me as a terrorist or whatever, a criminal ... a thug.” But, he said, “you should look about yourself first. I fight for my belief, and I’m a mujahid, and you think that you own the world, and I would prove it that you are wrong.”

He said Americans did not understand people like him and Mohamed Atta, the hijacking “emir” who flew the first plane into the World Trade Center. Nevertheless, he warned, “we will come back another day.” He cursed the United States and praised Bin Laden. “You will never get him,” he said.

The judge spoke last and, where Moussaoui was defiant, she was eloquent. If Moussoaui thought he won, she said, he should look around the crowded courtroom, filled with lawyers, victims’ families and federal marshals.

“They are free to go anyplace they want,” she said. “They can go outside, and they can feel the sun. They can smell fresh air. They can hear the birds.... In terms of winners and losers, it’s quite clear who won yesterday and who lost yesterday.”

Moussaoui interrupted. “That was my choice,” he said, trying to suggest he had outwitted the system by beating the death penalty.

“It was hardly your choice,” the judge fired back.

On her high wooden bench she had stacked four thick green files filled with statements from victims’ relatives. There were 408 in all; she said she had read every one. That is what this case was about, she said.

“This trial and this verdict are clear evidence of the enduring strength of this nation and its core values, which do not focus on hatred, bigotry and irrationality,” the judge said.

“Rather, we believe that all persons are created equal and that when they appear in one of our courts of law, they will be treated as equals, regardless of their background or their political beliefs.”

She thanked all of those who had helped put on what she called the most difficult case of her 13-year career on the bench. When Moussaoui tried to interject she cut him off again. His words faded; even the court reporter could not get them down.

“You will never again get a chance to speak,” the judge said. “And that is an appropriate and fair ending. This case is now closed.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Reactions

Comments Thursday as Zacarias Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison:

“God save Osama bin Laden.”

Moussaoui

at his sentencing

*

“Now he is going to die in little doses. 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.”

Moussaoui’s mother,

Aicha

speaking in France

*

“You and all the rest of your colleagues will not deter this country from enjoying the freedom it’s had for more than 200 years.”

Abraham Scott

whose wife, Janice, died in the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon, addressing Moussaoui in the courtroom

Source: Associated Press

Los Angeles Times