Word: moussaoui
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...easy to have sympathy for Frenchman Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in connection with the September 11 terror attacks. During his trial, Moussaoui pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden and prayed that al-Qaeda succeeds in its violent jihad against the U.S; he also mocked the families of 9/11 victims and dared the court to inflict the harshest punishment for the crimes which, after veering erratically between denial and advocacy, he finally took responsibility for. In May 2006, a jury decided against the death penalty but sent Moussaoui, now 41, to life imprisonment and near total isolation...
...Moussaoui says he regrets pleading guilty. But, he has a problem: U.S. law does not allow those who have taken that route to appeal their cases. His only shot at winning a lighter sentence is the July 14 decision by a federal appeals court in Virginia to re-hear arguments that the government had failed to turn over key evidence to Moussaoui and his lawyer that might have helped in his defense. As politically untenable as it may seem, President Barack Obama should support Moussaoui's efforts to win another trial. (Check out a story about "Bombers...
...Because justice and sympathy are different issues. Moussaoui's courtroom antics and declarations were outrageous but the prosecution of his trial was a farce nonetheless. Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema repeatedly criticized certain aspects of the prosecutors' efforts to win a guilty verdict as both underhanded and illegal. At one point in the trial, Brinkema rebuked prosecutors for illegally coaching a witness from a federal agency. She called that tampering "an egregious" and a "significant error by the government affecting the... integrity of the criminal justice system of the United States...
...Brinkema presided over the 2006 trial and conviction of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. When the jury in that case sentenced Moussaoui to life in prison instead of death, Brinkema told him he would "die with a whimper" behind bars. U.S. prosecutors could have sent Sami al-Arian out of the country in disgrace three years ago. Instead, they seem to have turned a man who has rooted for suicide bombers into a man many justice advocates are rooting...
...will raise another question: What other evidence has the CIA destroyed? And can the CIA be trusted to tell us? The CIA had told the 9/11 Commission, when it formally requested such materials, that there was no taping of interrogations. CIA lawyers also told federal prosecutors trying the Zacarias Moussaoui terror case that the agency did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge and Moussaoui's defense lawyers. The CIA insists that the tapes destroyed were not the ones in question...