[smiley]

Perhaps some of you could help me on this.

As I understand Moussaoui is found to be eligible for the death penalty because he knew of the 911 attacks on the World Trade Center and did not warn anyone. So while he was not (and would not) be involved in the WTC attacks he was responsible.

I can understand that reasoning. If you know that 3000 people are going to die you have a moral obligation to try to prevent it.

On the other hand, since he was in custody he had the constitutional right not to tell anyone. So in fact he is being tried and possibly executed for exercising his constitutional right.

Not that I want to defend his actions in any way, I am more concerned about the judicial implications. Wouldn't this throw the fifth amendment out of the window?

Am I missing something here?

[bobcousins]

"Foreigners have no rights" says Supreme Court Justice.

If he's lucky he'll get a fair trial and the death penalty.

If he's unlucky he'll just get the death penalty.

[CrudeAwakening]

Moussaoui is being used as a focus for people's instinct for revenge for 9-11. He'll get the death penalty, certainly. The trial itself seems a bit of a kangaroo court, with much of the prosecutions case seemingly centered around whipping up the emotions of the jury with images of burnt victims, death screams, etc.

Meanwhile, the attempts of the Minneapolis FBI to seek a warrant to search Moussaoui's laptop in mid-August 2001 don't seem to get much play. These efforts were thwarted by 'Spike' Bowman of the Radical Fundamentalist Unit, who removed crucial evidence linking Moussaoui to al-Qaeda before passing the request on to the FBI Deputy General Counsel, who then concluded there was "insufficient evidence of a connection to al-Qaeda" for a search warrant. But I don't see Mr Bowman in the dock.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/05/ ... 18700.html

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')BI officials in Washington not only stymied an investigation into flight school student Zacarias Moussaoui before September 11, but also tried to stop field agents linking the suspected 20th hijacker to the terrorist attacks after they occurred, an agent claims in a 13-page "whistle-blower" letter.

Agent Coleen Rowley, the chief lawyer in the Minneapolis field office, alleges that intelligence on Moussaoui provided by the French Government, which included information on his "activities connected with Osama bin Laden", was more than enough to obtain a warrant to search his laptop computer in the weeks before the terrorist attacks.

But requests for a warrant were thwarted by FBI supervisors in Washington, who seemed so intent on ignoring the threat Moussaoui posed that some field agents speculated that key officials at FBI headquarters "had to be spies or moles ... working for Osama bin Laden".

In her letter, Ms Rowley accuses the FBI director, Robert Mueller, of making it appear the FBI had no concrete evidence that Moussaoui was involved in planning the terrorist attacks until after the September 11 strikes took place.

"To get to the point, I have deep concerns that a delicate and subtle shading /skewing of facts by you and others at the highest levels of FBI management has occurred and is occurring," Ms Rowley said.