Don't Kill Moussaoui
 

It would just give him what he wants most in life -- death as a martyr.

Right Trial, Wrong Defendant

By JOHN FARMER
Newark

The courtroom atmosphere was electric, the evidence of atrocity overwhelming. The prosecution presented first-hand accounts that victims "frequently remained in the burning buildings and jumped out of the windows only when the heat became unbearable." Graphic images of mass slaughter were shown. Civic leaders attested to their helplessness as they watched the death throes of innocents. People who had escaped death, and family members of those who perished, recounted unspeakable horror, irretrievable loss.

This description is not of the penalty phase trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, although it certainly could be. Rather, it is of evidence presented at the Nuremberg trials of 1945 and '46: accounts of the burning of the Warsaw ghetto, films of the concentration camps, personal recollections. Those trials, and that evidence, assured a place in infamy for the likes of Hermann Göring and other top-ranking Nazis. They also reasserted, for the world community, the rule of law.

Reminders of the Nuremberg evidence have been inevitable as the Moussaoui case ascended from the low farce of the pre-penalty phase — "the show must go on," Mr. Moussaoui said aptly — to high tragedy, with the testimony of witnesses to the mass slaughter of 9/11. As the government's evidence of the horror that day rises to a climax this week — with the prosecutors planning to play the cockpit voice recorder from United Flight 93 and the testimony of bereft survivors and family members — the courtroom will ring again with echoes of the horrors recounted at Nuremberg.

Those similarities will serve, however, only to underscore how misguided the Moussaoui death-penalty proceeding has been as the signature prosecution of the 9/11 atrocities and as a vindication of the rule of law. Put simply, Zacarias Moussaoui is no Hermann Göring. He's barely Colonel Klink.

Through a perverse confluence, Mr. Moussaoui's interest in becoming something in death that he never was in life — important — has combined with the government's interest in executing someone for the 9/11 attacks. The likely result is an odd form of assisted suicide, in which Mr. Moussaoui will claim martyrdom as he is executed, and the United States will claim that the rule of law has been vindicated by bringing a terrorist to justice for 9/11.

Neither claim will be justified. Right penalty. Wrong terrorist.

Zacarias Moussaoui is evil, and there is no doubt that he arrived here determined to kill Americans, but he was not a leader of Al Qaeda. He was not even, as initially reported, the "20th hijacker." He was not in contact with the 9/11 hijackers in the United States. His apprehension in late August 2001 did nothing to disrupt the plot's timing. He sat in jail while the attacks unfolded.

Based on his conduct, he should sit in jail some more. Six floors underground, with one hour outside his cell per week. For, oh, 50 more years or so. He should die there, frustrated and forgotten, embittered and anonymous. This could have been achieved without the catharsis of the penalty hearing. That should have awaited a more culpable defendant.

As the primary focus of the government's prosecution of 9/11, Mr. Moussaoui is a poor stand-in not only for Osama bin Laden, who remains at large, but also for Qaeda leaders directly involved in 9/11 who have been in custody for years. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks, was apprehended in 2003. Ramzi bin Al-Shieb, who was a close associate of Mohamed Atta in Germany, is also in custody. So is the real "20th hijacker," Mohamed al-Kahtani, who is being held in Guantánamo Bay. Any of these men would have been a more appropriate defendant than Mr. Moussaoui, based on actual involvement in the attacks, as a primary focus for the heartrending evidence of the mass murder of 9/11.

Why, then, the failure to make one or all of them the face of the government's prosecution of the 9/11 murders? The answer is unclear. Perhaps they are providing useful information in the war on terrorism. Perhaps their prosecution has been compromised by their treatment after apprehension.

What is clear is that the administration has struggled in many contexts to define how — or whether — it will vindicate the rule of law in the war on terrorism. Its effort to hold suspected terrorists classified as "enemy combatants" indefinitely without due process was roundly rejected by the Supreme Court.

Its effort to hold Jose Padilla, an American captured in America, first as a criminal suspect, then as an enemy combatant, and finally, when the case appeared ripe again for Supreme Court review, as an indicted defendant, would be laughable if its manipulation of due process weren't so transparent. The government's condoning of aggressive interrogation has been castigated at home and abroad as support for torture.

Viewed in this light, the government's designation of Mr. Moussaoui as the signature prosecution for the atrocities of 9/11 seems arbitrary at best, one more symptom of a lack of coherent policy.

Atrocities cry out not just for vengeance, but for justice. This requires not just that something happen to the perpetrators, but that it happen the right way, according to clear rules and competent evidence, and that the result be just. It is why Winston Churchill's early view (as made clear in minutes of his cabinet meetings released last December) that all Nazi leaders should be court-martialed and summarily executed was rejected. As the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert Jackson, put it: "We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well."

As a result of the Nuremburg trials, some Nazi leaders were executed, but some were not. The trial record survives to frustrate the most ardent Holocaust denier.

The Bush administration should ensure that the evidence of the monstrous crimes of 9/11 is brought not just against a fringe character like Zacarias Moussaoui but against the Qaeda leadership as soon as possible, in a forum that upholds the high principles of fairness and justice that are the hallmark of our culture. Our leaders should not forget that, as Justice Jackson put it six decades ago, "The real complaining party at your bar is civilization."

John Farmer, a former attorney general of New Jersey, was a senior counsel to the 9/11 commission.

From what I read about his testimony at the trial, it sounds like he's trying to work this for all he can. He knows he's never going to see daylight again, so he might as well create a legend for himself...

yeah don't kill him. he would much rather die an important death than live in an american prison. if he were a hijacker involved with9/11 then he may still info usefulto the us. he dies and takes it with him.

Fed him to the pigs,sell the video
Rika

I'd rather they just lock him away in a room in which the faces of the people killed by the plot that he was involved with are constantly being projected onto the walls. Also provide an audio track with their voices and their eulegies being read by friends and families. Make sure that it is something that he can't avoid.

Let him spend the rest of his (hopefully long) life learning and thinking about the pain and suffering that he has inflicted on so many innocent people. I see no reason that this should be considered crual and unusual since he has continued to show no remorse.

I like that idea...Sometimes I wish Republicans were fascists, only with righteous brutality and limited government.

Yeah; if there was just some way we could limit their governance...

The death penalty is barbaric. I would rather turn him loose in the general prison population. :D

When the Const. was written, "cruel and unusual punishment" was a world away from what we consider that to be nowadays. Even so, I'm a little ambivalent about his sentence. I can't stand that it will cost us millions more in circus trial appeals to put this guy to death. But I also can't see why we even have a death penalty if this guy doesn't get it.

It is possible. If we had a truly objective press the Democrats would be a thing of the past and all would see clearly that limited government and national security were not only compatible but necessary to support a free society...As long as we have Democrats we will have big-government corruption and a political party that has a vested interest in social ills, therefore a stake in keeping social ills unsolved.

This is his ********* 0

This is his ********* in prison 0 :D

Moussaoui will never be placed in general population. He'll live and die in solitary confinement.

Strip hin naked
spraypaint him purple and turn him loose in the south west desert.
or
Crusify him, just like Christ right before he dies let him be stabbed by a woman, Oh and do all this while inside the gate of a rather large pig farm.

Oh screw it I'll cap him myself if I am allowed!

Authorizing the state to kill people is a bad idea. Citizens have the right to use lethal force in self defense, but allowing the state to kill people, particularly in a ritualistic state execution, is not a good idea.

In this instance, the accused was mostly tried because he didn't tell the state what they wanted to know. Since he obviously did't participate in the 9/11/2001 criminal actions, he can't be tried for those.

"Conspiracy to commit" laws have no basis in common law, and as such should be held unConstitutional. Yes, all of them. They amount to no more than thought crimes.

Right Pat. We should just let him go. That's a great idea. Do you belong to the Flat Earth Society too?

Revenge might taste good at first, at least before you realize that you just gave him exactly what he wanted.

I prefer a longer view.

"We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well."

As to torturing and killing a man, I too have my fantasies. But when I consider how it would affect me as a human being, what it would do to me to actually follow through, the memories I would have to live with for a lifetime, I think I'll pass.

I'd rather go to my grave knowing that I never set out to to cause another man to suffer and die to satisfy my blood lust, however understandable the desire.

Lock him in a cell for the rest of his life. Solitary would be just fine. No special priveleges, no priveleges at all, for that matter. No Khoran, no windows, so he can't tell in which direction to pray, no clock so he doesn't know what time to pray and for his diet, nothing pork products. Snouts, hooves, tails, and testicles. (They could even cook it, occasionally.) Nothing else. For the nutrition he would have received from the other food groups, he can be provided that sustanance via vitamins, etc., nothing filling.

Let him live a long, lonely, healthy life in this manner.

That would work...

Randy

There is substantial ground between not allowing the state to kill him and turning him loose, Rick. Don't be absurd.

My punishment would be to require his total enslavement to the victims families, and everyone else they catch, try, and convict for involvement.

US prisons already have a reputation as torture centers, increasing that reputation isn't a good thing.

Are you fukin nuts?...We coddle our criminals, including criminal terrorists (better known to you as 'freedom fighters')...The ME scum, now that I think about it, must be wondering what a bunch of pussies we are.