Alexandria (US): Al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui deserves the death penalty for his role in the 9/11 attacks. That's the argument of the US government.
Prosecutors say that he did not give vital information, which may have foiled the 11 September plot.
But his court-appointed defence team pleaded with jurors yesterday not to hand him the martyrdom sworn al-Qaeda members crave, saying he did not deserve to be a hero.
Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan heritage, is the only man so far tried in a US courtroom in connection with the September 11 strikes in 2001.
He lounged in a chair and stroked his thick, black beard as he was branded a "proud and unrepentant terrorist" key to the September 11 plot.
Government lawyers said he had the blood of nearly 3,000 victims on his hands, as he had not spoken up when he was arrested weeks before his "Al-Qaeda brothers" launched the world's deadliest terror strike.
In a statement of guilt in April 2005, Moussaoui admitted to six counts of conspiring with al-Qaeda to fly airliners into US government buildings.
But he has maintained he was due to fly a jetliner into the White House as part of a follow-up wave of attacks and not the September 11 strikes.
As relatives of September 11 victims watched on closed circuit television in courthouses around the US, prosecutor Robert Spencer declared, "one of the conspirators is among us, that man is the defendant."
(With AFP inputs)
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