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'God curse America'
05/05/2006 10:05 - (SA)
Alexandria - Zacarias Moussaoui left the spotlight on Thursday after delivering an insolent soliloquy, salted with malice, menace, and mockery of the September 11 death toll.
The al-Qaeda disciple brought down the curtain on his four-and-a-half year personal jihad with US justice by trading insults with those who had lives ripped apart by his terrorist comrades.
He will now "rot", in the words of a witness in his trial, in isolation in a dungeon-like prison in Colorado, penned in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, every day.
'You will die with a whimper'
Or, as Judge Leonie Brinkema, who parried his insults, and courtroom theatrics for the last four years, put it paraphrasing the T.S Eliot poem Hollow Men: "You will die with a whimper."
Moussaoui breathed contempt as he was led into the expectant seventh-floor court for a final time in his two-month trial.
Flashing 'V' for victory signs and a boastful grin, and garbed in green and white skull cap, the Frenchman clearly relished a final chance to strut centre stage.
Disgust
He sat bolt upright in his chair, leaning slightly forward, as Rosemary Dillard, who lost her husband on September 11, told him "for you, I feel nothing but disgust".
"I have watched you twiddling with your beard and making faces, and felt no remorse."
Another bereaved relative, Lisa Dolan, turned from a lectern to point at Moussaoui, flanked by three towering security men in sharp suits.
"There is still one final judgement day," she warned.
'God curse America, God save Osama bin Laden'
Asked by Brinkema if he would like to speak, Moussaoui answered "yes".
"I had prepared something to say, but I would like to respond to the three victims' families that just spoke," he said with a slight French accent.
"I destroyed a life, and she lost her husband. Maybe one day she will think how many people the CIA have destroyed their lives."
"God curse America, God save Osama bin Laden. You'll never get him," said Moussaoui, who US prosecutors say "lied" while in jail in August 2001, to allow the September 11 attacks to go forward.
To Dolan, he said: "Of course he was developing peace and love in the world in his warship."
Moussaoui stood to hear his fate formally announced.
"You are sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of release," Brinkema said.
Warning of new terror attacks
As he was led away to the cells, the end of his final, 20 minute drama beckoning, Moussaoui uttered his last-ever public speech.
"You don't want to hear, America. You will feel.
"We will come back another day," he declared angrily in an apparent warning of new terror attacks.
"I will be free before the end of George W. Bush!" he said, repeating his "dream" that the US president will release him before he leaves office.
With that, Moussaoui was ushered to his exit, and left on his journey of no return to Colorado.
- AFP
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