'I'm going to die aren't I?'

2006-04-10 19:32

Alexandria - The trial of al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui on Monday heard harrowing accounts of how people died on September 11, and the suffering endured by victims' families.

Some people in the court fought back tears as they heard testimony in support of the prosecution demand that the 37-year-old Frenchman be executed for his role in the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington in the United States.

Moussaoui was in detention at the time the planes were hijacked and flown into the World Trade Centre towers in New York.

The jury has already ruled that his not telling the truth at the time of his detention prevented any chance to avoid the attacks, and that he contributed to the almost 3 000 dead.

Jurors are now hearing testimony on the impact of his actions as they decide whether or not he should be put to death.

US prosecutors played a four minute tape of an emergency call Melissa Doi, 34, made from the 83rd floor of one of the burning towers before they collapsed.

'I'm going to die aren't I?'

"The floor is completely engulfed, it is very, very hot. I am going to die aren't I, I am going to die, I am going to die," Doi could be heard screaming. "Please God, it is so hot, I am burning up."

C Lee Hanson, 73, told how he was talking with his son, Peter, on the telephone and then turned on the television to see the plane his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter were on hit the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11.

Peter Hanson, Soo-Kim Hanson and their two-and-a-half year old daughter Christine Lee Hanson, were going on holiday to Disneyland.

Christine was the youngest victim of September 11.

Peter Hanson was one of many passengers who made final calls from the hijacked planes with hand phones.

"I think they are going to try to crash this plane into a building," he said to his father. "Don't worry Dad. If it happens, it will be quick."

C Lee Hanson said: "As we were talking, all of a sudden he stopped and said very softly: 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God'."

"I looked over at the television set and saw a plane fly into the building."

'It's all I have left'

Hanson said that one month after the attacks he was told a bone fragment from his son had been found. It measured from his wrist to the end of his finger.

He went to a funeral parlour to collect it: "I picked it up. I looked at it. It's all I had left of my beautiful redheaded son."

US prosecutors, who opened their case last week, plan to call at least 30 more relatives of those who died on September 11.

They want to recreate the anguish to convince jurors to recommend the death sentence.

Defence lawyers have signalled they will portray the admitted al-Qaeda conspirator as mentally ill, the product of a broken childhood and racial isolation, which they say made him easy prey for radical Islamists.

- AFP