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Moussaoui wants more US pain
On the witness stand in his death penalty trial, days before jurors will be asked to decide whether he should be executed, Moussaoui said he dreamed that President George W. Bush would release him before he leaves office in 2009. Amid signs that the jury would be handed the case early next week, he justified Al-Qaeda's strikes with Koranic verses. In an anti-Israel tirade, he argued the United States is "the head of the snake" that acts as "life support" for "The Jewish State of Palestine." Asked by prosecutor Rob Spencer about September 11, Moussaoui replied quickly, "No regret, no remorse." "I just wish it had happened on the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th, we can go on and on." "So would you be happy to see 9/11 again?" Mr Spencer asked. "Every day," Moussaoui answered. Mr Spencer asked Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States in connection with the attacks, if he had enjoyed video of the Pentagon in flames. "I would have laughed but I knew I would have been kicked out of court," he replied. One officer, Lieutenant Colonel John Thurman, described on Wednesday terrible scenes moments after a hijacked jet slammed into the Pentagon and how he crawled out of the inferno. "It was pathetic. I was regretful he didn't die," said Moussaoui. Asked about sobs on the witness stand from navy Lieutenant Nancy McKeown, who lost two subordinates in the Pentagon, he replied: "I think it was disgusting." While the defence has been urging jurors to send him to prison for life so that he does not become a martyr, the Al-Qaeda operative said he dreamt Mr Bush would release him. "I have 100 per cent belief that you will never get my blood because I will be free," he said. The jury has ruled that Moussaoui, already in jail at the time of the attacks, is eligible for execution, accepting prosecution arguments his "lies" let his Al-Qaeda "brothers" go ahead with the attacks. They must now decide whether the sentence should be carried out. The defence plans to portray Moussaoui as a paranoid schizophrenic and highlight his tough upbringing to support pleas for life imprisonment. But Mr Spencer asked Moussaoui to diagnose his own condition. "Are you crazy Mr Moussaoui?" he asked. "Thank God, I am not," the defendant answered. Asked by the prosecutor if he wanted to die, Moussaoui replied: "I want to fight." Did he want to stay alive to kill Americans? "Any time, anywhere," Moussaoui answered. Moussaoui lambasted US support for Israel, which he said was little more than a US colony and "the missing star in the American flag". "You (Americans) are the head of the snake for me. If we want to destroy the Jewish State of Palestine, we have to destroy you first," Moussaoui told the court. Moussaoui leafed through the Koran, finding chapter nine, which he said calls on Muslims to fight for supremacy. Defence lawyer Gerald Zerkin asked Moussaoui why he hates the United States and Americans, apparently working from a list of questions that Moussaoui said he was prepared to answer. "It is going to be long," he said. "You are on a crusade, like George W. Bush says. In Europe, they call New York 'little Israel'," he replied. Moussaoui condemned the United States for being the first country, in 1948, to recognise Israel, which he referred to as the "Jewish State of Palestine". "There is no difference between the Jewish State of Palestine and Hawaii," declared Moussaoui. Moussaoui was in detention during the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. But the jury agreed in an earlier part of the trial that he was eligible for the death penalty because his lies about the planned attacks contributed to the almost 3000 deaths that day. The first defence witness was a senior former prison officer, James Aiken, who said if he was jailed for life, Moussaoui would "rot" in isolation in the most secure US prison. The trial resumes on Monday. Posted by: tipper 2006-04-14 |
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