Moussaoui jurors moved by evidence of deprived childhood

After listening to six weeks of argument, tears and revelations, more of the jurors who spared Zacarias Moussaoui’s life were moved by the al-Qaida conspirator’s turbulent, deprived childhood than by claims that he was a delusional psychotic seeking martyrdom.

In rejecting execution for life behind bars yesterday, some of the nine men and three women, drawn from the suburbs of the nation’s capitol near the terrorist-targeted Pentagon, also seemed to be swayed by the limits of his role in the deadliest terror attacks in US history.

The jury in Alexandria, Virginia, could not agree unanimously on government claims that the 37-year-old Frenchman, who was in jail on September 11 2001, caused the deaths of the nearly 3,000 people who died that day, or that he acted in a heinous, cruel or depraved manner.

Three of them even made a point of writing that, despite Moussaoui’s dramatic testimony claiming to be a part of the plot, he had limited knowledge of the plans for the suicide jetliner hijackings of 9/11.

The extraordinary 42-page verdict form in the sentencing trial, with its lists of aggravating and mitigating evidence, provided clues to the thought processes the jury engaged in during more than 41 hours of deliberations over seven days. But the jurors slipped away from the court without speaking to reporters, so how much weight they gave each factor remained unknown.

The verdict form said only that they could not agree unanimously on execution and thus Moussaoui had to be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of release. There was no word on exactly how many voted for life and how many for death.

Moussaoui had claimed a direct role in the September 11 attacks even though he was in jail at the time on immigration charges.

In Paris, Moussaoui’s mother, Aicha El Wafi, told France-Info radio: “I feel nothing. I am dead, because my son was wrongly convicted.”

Moussaoui crowed on leaving court after the 15-minute hearing: “America, you lost. … I won.”

From the White House, President George Bush said the verdict “represents the end of this case but not an end to the fight against terror”. He said Moussaoui got a fair trial and the jury spared his life, “which is something that he evidently wasn’t willing to do for innocent American citizens”.

The verdict came after four years of legal manoeuvring and six weeks of testimony that put jurors on an emotional rollercoaster and gave Moussaoui a platform to needle Americans and relish the pain of the victims and their families.

Judge Leonie Brinkema will hand down the life sentence today, bound by the jury’s verdict. Offering assurance to the losing side, she told prosecutors: “The government always wins when justice is done.” Moussaoui smiled.

The outcome was a stinging defeat for the Justice Department and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, a former federal prosecutor in Alexandria who was overseeing the case. He said afterwards: “The jury has spoken, and we respect and accept that verdict.”

Moussaoui is expected to spend the rest of his life at the federal maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado.

During the trial, no one disputed that Moussaoui came to the US intending to do harm and that he received flight training towards that goal. But his lawyers said he was an al Qaida outcast who was not trusted with the knowledge of the September 11 plot.

The verdict was received with silence in the packed courtroom, where one row was lined with victims' families.

The jurors were divided on the 23 mitigating factors in the case. None was moved by the fact that top al-Qaida operatives in US custody were not facing death penalty prosecutions, but three cited racism that Moussaoui faced as a child of Moroccan descent.

In their successful defence of Moussaoui, his lawyers revealed new levels of pre-attack bungling of intelligence by the FBI and other government agencies.

By the trial’s end, the defence team was portraying its uncooperative client as a delusional schizophrenic. They argued he took the witness stand to confess a role in September 11 that he never had – all to achieve martyrdom through execution or for recognition in history.

They overcame the impact of two dramatic appearances by Moussaoui himself - first to renounce his four years of denying any involvement in the attacks and then to gloat over the pain of those who lost loved ones.