[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----KY., ILL., USA, N.Y.

[Rick Halperin]

April 21



KENTUCKY:

Attorney General asks for execution date for convicted murderer


In Frankfort, the Attorney General has asked Governor Fletcher to set an
execution date for a Kentucky man sentenced to death for a 1979 murder.

Brian Keith Moore faces lethal injection for killing 77-year--old Virgil
Harris on his way to his 77th birthday party on August 10th, 1979.

The 48-year-old Moore was originally sentenced in 1980.

Kentucky has executed 2 inmates since the reinstatement of the death
penalty in 1976.

Harold McQueen of Madison County was put to death in the electric chair in
1997 and Eddie Lee Harper of Louisville became the only inmate to be
executed by lethal injection in 1999.

(source: WKYT News)






ILLINOIS:

Will the Death Penalty Return to Illinois?----6 years after former
Governor George Ryan placed a moratorium on all executions, state
prosecutors are hoping they can finally reverse that decision


This week's sweeping guilty verdict in the federal corruption case against
former Illinois Governor George Ryan seemed sure to seal the gruff
Republican's legacy as yet another in a long line of crooked Illinois
politicians. But Ryans other major legacy - the moratorium he placed on
executions in 2000, which earned him a Nobel Peace Prize nomination - is
also under attack, and the reverberations could be felt across the entire
country's criminal justice system.

6 years after Ryan's unilateral move set off a wave of capital punishment
reforms nationwide, conservative prosecutors throughout the state are
hoping a change at the Governor's Mansion this fall can usher back the
death penalty. While Democratic incumbent Rod Blagojevich has said Ryan's
moratorium should remain in place, at least for the foreseeable future,
his Republican challenger and state treasurer Judy Baar Topinka has hinted
that enough safeguards have now been put into place for the death penalty
to be reinstated.

"It's time to have a Governor who exercises authority in the way it was
intended," said Topinka's running mate Joseph Birkett, the state's
attorney in Republican DuPage County, who helped author some of the
reforms in Illinois. "People felt betrayed by what Ryan did."

Only seven inmates currently sit on Illinois death row, where about 170
were before Ryan cleared it out shortly before leaving office 3 years ago.
Even though no executions can currently be carried out, the death sentence
can still be handed down, and some 200 cases are currently in the pipeline
in which prosecutors have signaled their intention to seek capital
punishment.

"The moratorium has had no practical effect and I think it would be good
to lift it," said Thomas Brown, the chief prosecutor for rural Livingston
County, who won a new death sentence for the only person who was cleared
from death row by Ryan but then returned for a separate murder case.
"We've had to start filling it back up one by one, and there's no case
thats ripe yet so it could be 15 or 20 years of appeals before anyone
actually is executed (if the moratorium gets lifted). There's this push
for perfection. But that raises the argument, how do you perfect a
system?'"

Illinois certainly has tried to do just that. Shortly after Ryan granted
clemency to some and commuted all other death sentences to life in prison,
the state launched a major study and overhaul of the system. At the time,
about thirteen inmates on Death Row had been found innocent and freed, one
more than the number who had been executed since the death penalty was
reinstated in 1977. New reforms adopted included an overhaul in police
lineups to guard against false identifications, the videotaping of most
murder confessions, some state Supreme Court oversight of capital cases to
make sure they are handled fairly and the requirement that criminal
defense attorneys be sufficiently qualified to try such
cases.(Investigations of Illinois system revealed that in some death
cases, defense attorneys had never tried a murder before. In other cases,
the attorneys nodded off, napping during trial at the defense table.)

"We had the worst record in the country in terms of sending innocent
people to death row," said Gov. Blagojevich's spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff.
"We have enacted major reforms here to prevent future injustices, but a
system that was so obviously broken cant be fixed overnight."

The debate over Illinois's pioneering roll back of the death penalty comes
as more and more states are conducting their own reappraisals. In recent
years, states from New York and New Jersey to Kansas, Virginia, Kentucky
and California, have either enacted a similar moratorium, had certain
executions ruled out by the courts or at least started doing comprehensive
studies of the death penalty system.

Across the country, death sentences and executions are both down,
according to Richard Dieter, head of the Washington-based Death Penalty
Information Center. "Even public support is down, from about 80 % in 1994
to 64 % now," says Dieter. "There is simply concern around the country
about innocence and I think it would be strange to jump back into regular
executions until there was more confidence." Dieter clearly hopes that day
will not come. But in Illinois, it now seems possible that a loss of
confidence in one of the death penalty's most outspoken and notable
opponents may help bring it back to life.

(source: TIME Magazine)






USA:

Compare and contrast


"Compare and contrast," read the directions for essay exams in the old
college blue books. Compare and contrast the trials of Zacarias Moussaoui
and Jeffrey Skilling.

Moussaoui appears to be headed for the death penalty, despite having an
alibi of the lead-pipe-cinch variety. He was in jail on September 11,
2001, so we know he wasn't out hijacking jets and killing people. He also
appears to be seriously crazy, or at the very least a chronic liar, but
that's a separate argument. Although Moussaoui is a member of al Qaeda,
there is evidence that they thought he was a crazy screw-up, too. Peter
Bergen, author of 2 books about Osama bin Laden, told The Washington Post,
"Even al Qaeda tried to cut this guy loose."

In Texas, we are quite accustomed to seeing people who haven't actually
hurt anyone sentenced to death. One classic case featured a kid whose
entire contribution to the annals of crime consisted of holding open a
screen window. Another kid crawled through said window to burgle a house,
surprised the householder, and shot and killed her. The perp then rolled
on the screen-holder, who bought the death penalty for abetting in the
commission of a felony with firearm.

Nor would Moussaoui's mental state draw much note here. Where's Dr. Death
when you need him? Dr. James Grigson testified in hundreds of capital
murder cases in Texas and was always certain that the defendants were
going to commit more violent crimes and should be executed -- even though
he never met with some of them before testifying.

If I were to make an argument against the death penalty for Moussaoui, it
would be on grounds of practical public relations. Why let this guy have
martyrdom and world fame when we could just put him away?

Meanwhile, back in Houston, we have our laughs, too. Jeff Skilling was
testifying along about the great rip-off that almost pushed California
into bankruptcy when he observed that the state formerly called "Golden"
had a regulatory environment like that of Brazil.

Prosecutor Sean Berkowitz stared at him. "Do you think it was funny what
happened in California? You're smiling."

Skilling backtracked and said he regretted joking about it. But isn't it
almost funny, what happened in California? Remember the Enron energy
traders who thought it was so funny they joked about ripping off "Grandma
Millie," the citizens of California, and how unfair it was that they
wanted their money back? All that madness when California was caught in
this hopeless bind, having to buy energy at grossly inflated prices?

If the California legislators had been stupid enough to deregulate
electricity in such a disastrous way on their own, they would deserve
being laughed at. But they had help -- from Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling.
Enron spent more than $345,000 lobbying in California.

Skilling himself testified to utility commissioners that deregulation
could save the state $8.9 billion: "You can triple the number of police
officers in Los Angles, San Francisco, Oakland and San Diego. The stakes
are huge, and every minute that we delay bringing competitive markets to
California allows the meter to keep ticking."

Enron was very busy creating the regulatory climate of Brazil nationwide
in those years. From 1997 to 2000, 24 states adopted energy deregulation,
and Enron repeatedly sent Lay and Skilling to testify. The company spent
more than $1.9 million in campaign contributions to more than 700
candidates in 28 states since 1997, according to the National Institute on
Money in State Politics.

Enron had a huge fleet of lobbyists and even enlisted George W. Bush,
then-governor of Texas, to call Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania to lobby
for deregulation. According to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, "In
early 1998, Enron Corp. secured a $750,000 contract for political
operatives tied to (then) House Majority Whip Tom DeLay to secretly
conduct an aggressive grass-roots campaign pushing energy deregulation.
... The contract was awarded after DeLay personally recommended to Enron
officials that they hire the team of strategists who make up the inner
circle of his political and fund-raising machine."

I doubt it will startle any citizen to read that the quality of justice in
this country is deeply affected by how much you can afford to pay for it.
If Zacarias Moussaoui could afford the jury coach Jeff Skilling has
sitting in the courtroom, he'd doubtlessly be less at risk.

But in both cases there is the same feeling that maybe we've missed the
point -- the real culprits in Moussaoui case were the FBI higher-ups who
stifled the investigation and have never paid any price. In the Enron
case, our political system should be a co-defendant -- campaign
contributions, lobbyists, sell-outs and all.

(source: Molly Ivins, for CNN)

*******************

Supreme Court Examines Insanity Defense


The much-maligned insanity defense was the focus of debate before the
Supreme Court on Wednesday in a case that could further limit its use.

Justices seemed troubled by the case Clark v. Arizona, in which Eric
Clark's plea of insanity was rejected, resulting in Clark being convicted
of first-degree murder for killing a Flagstaff, Ariz., police officer,
even though, his lawyer said, Clark thought he was shooting at an alien
being.

But several justices seemed to accept the argument by Arizona and the Bush
administration that states have broad discretion in limiting the insanity
defense -- even to the point of eliminating it altogether, as several
states have done.

"The state has a great interest in preserving its definition of insanity
and its ability to define it as it sees fit," said Randall Howe, chief
appellate counsel of the Arizona attorney general's criminal division.

The outcome of the Court's first look at the insanity defense in decades
was difficult to predict. Ever since John Hinckley Jr., the man who shot
President Ronald Reagan in 1981, used the defense successfully, states
have restricted its scope.

Eric Clark was 17 at the time he shot officer Jeffrey Moritz in 2000.
Clark had been hospitalized for severe mental illnesses in the past, and
at trial his lawyers tried to establish both that he was insane and that
he lacked the criminal intent, or mens rea, to fit the definition of
1st-degree murder.

The judge ruled that under Arizona law, the mens rea argument was barred.
As for the insanity defense, the judge allowed evidence only to
demonstrate that Clark did not know his act was wrong. That is only one
part of the traditional 19th-century "M'Naghten Test" used by most states.

The other prong -- whether the defendant knew the "nature and quality" of
what he did -- is not part of Arizona's insanity defense law.

With those restrictions in place, the judge ruled that insanity had not
been proved, and Clark was found guilty. The state did not pursue the
death penalty, so Clark was sentenced to life in prison, not in a mental
hospital, as his lawyers had sought.

The issue before the high court is whether the limitations on the insanity
defense and the mens rea determination violated Clark's due process
rights.

Flagstaff lawyer David Goldberg struggled to convince the Court that
whether Clark knew right from wrong was only part of the relevant
analysis. "A person could know in the abstract that killing a human being
was wrong, but he could also not think he was killing a human being,"
Goldberg said, arguing that Clark thought he was killing one of the alien
beings that haunted his psyche.

But several justices appeared to believe that Clark had sufficient
opportunity to make his case for insanity -- enough that the separate mens
rea determination was unneeded. Solicitor General Paul Clement, arguing in
support of Arizona, emphasized that point, asserting that Clark has "no
constitutional right to make up the difference" between insanity and
criminal intent.

In a question directed to Howe, Justice John Paul Stevens took the issue a
step further. "Does it matter whether he thinks it is right or wrong to
kill Martians?"

Howe replied that if Clark truly believed he was shooting a Martian, he
might have had a stronger case for insanity. But Arizona contends that in
the weeks before the murder, Clark made threatening statements about
police and talked about luring an officer into a trap so he could shoot
one.

Adding to the drama of the argument Wednesday was the unusual circumstance
of Howe, Arizona's advocate. Howe is likely the first person with cerebral
palsy to argue before the Court.

The justices, who had been alerted to Howe's condition beforehand,
interrupted Howe and one another somewhat less often than in a typical
argument but peppered him with questions nonetheless.

(source: Legal Times)

****************

Prosecutors Concede Doubts About Moussaoui's Story


The prosecution acknowledged on Thursday that even the government's chief
investigators did not believe the claim of Zacarias Moussaoui that Richard
C. Reid, known as the shoe bomber, was to help him fly a jetliner into the
White House on Sept. 11, 2001.

The jury, which is considering whether to order either the death penalty
or life imprisonment for Mr. Moussaoui, was presented with a document
saying Federal Bureau of Investigation analysts had agreed that Mr. Reid
was never meant to be part of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The document, read to jurors by one of Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed
lawyers, was a "substitution" agreed to by prosecutors rather than having
Mr. Reid brought from prison in Colorado, where he is serving a life
sentence for trying to ignite a bomb in his shoe on an American Airlines
flight on Dec. 22, 2001.

The significance of the document is that the Justice Department has now
acknowledged that the government's principal investigators on the case are
highly skeptical of an important part of Mr. Moussaoui's statement, made
on the witness stand last month, about his role in the Sept. 11 plot.

In their summation to the jury last month in the first phase of the
sentencing trial, prosecutors repeatedly cited Mr. Moussaoui's testimony
that he was to fly a fifth hijacked plane into the White House on Sept. 11
and that Mr. Reid was to have been one of the hijackers.

Defense lawyers had asserted that Mr. Moussaoui concocted the claim to
make himself appear a far more important player in Al Qaeda than he really
was.

Mr. Moussaoui's statement was widely viewed as an important element in
persuading the jury to find him eligible for the death penalty.

The defense lawyers had sought to bring Mr. Reid to court this week to
debunk the story, but complications, including objections from his lawyer,
made that difficult. Instead, they introduced the substitution, which said
the government agreed that "to date, there is no information available
that Richard Reid had preknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and was instructed
by Al Qaeda leadership to conduct an operation with Moussaoui."

The statement read to the jury said Mr. Reid had left documents before
boarding the American Airlines flight showing that he had no intention to
take part in a martyrdom operation with Mr. Moussaoui. They included a
letter to his mother and a will in which he was to leave his belongings to
Mr. Moussaoui.

In addition, Mr. Reid was traveling throughout the world when the Sept. 11
hijackers were assembling in the United States.

Based on that, the document said two F.B.I. analysts had agreed that "it
is highly unlikely that Reid was part of this operation."

Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers, with whom he does not speak,
ended their case with the Reid statement.

Mr. Moussaoui, the only person to stand trial in the United States for the
Sept. 11 attacks, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy. The jury ruled last
month that he was eligible for the death penalty, even though he was in
jail at the time of the attacks, because he had concealed his knowledge of
Qaeda plans to fly planes into buildings.

The only remaining question for the jury, which will begin deliberations
on Monday, is whether to order his execution or allow him to spend the
rest of his life in prison.

Prosecutors ended their case Thursday with testimony by Dr. Raymond
Patterson, a forensic psychiatrist who has examined Mr. Moussaoui. Dr.
Patterson said Mr. Moussaoui suffered from a personality disorder but not
from schizophrenia or other major mental disease.

The jury heard testimony earlier from a psychologist and a psychiatrist
for the defense who had diagnosed Mr. Moussaoui's condition as a
schizophrenia of the paranoid variety.

Dr. Patterson disputed much of their conclusions.

(source: New York Times)

*****************

Jury told Reid did not know of 9/11 plot


"Shoebomber" Richard Reid had no advanced knowledge of the September 11
attacks, a jury was told on Thursday, casting doubt on claims by Zacarias
Moussaoui that Reid was to have joined him in the assault.

Defense lawyers rested their case at Moussaoui's sentencing trial after
reading a statement indicating Reid was not involved in the hijacking
plans.

Last month Moussaoui, who faces execution as the only person charged in
the United States for the September 11 plot, made a surprise claim that
Reid was to have joined him and fly a fifth plane into the White House as
part of a coordinated attack with hijacked airliners.

But Moussaoui's lawyers have said their client lied about his role in al
Qaeda and September 11, and have argued he is mentally ill and should not
be sentenced to death.

The Reid statement was presented after more family members of victims of
September 11 testified of the need to understand why the attacks happened
and not to seek retribution.

Alan Yamamoto, one of Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers, read the
statement, a stipulation agreed to by federal prosecutors seeking
Moussaoui's execution.

"There is no information available to indicate that Richard Reid had
pre-knowledge of the 9/11 attacks or was instructed by al Qaeda leadership
to conduct an operation in coordination with Moussaoui," the statement
said.

It said Reid had written a will naming Moussaoui as the beneficiary of his
belongings. FBI analysts concluded the will showed it was "highly
unlikely" Reid was to have been part of the same martyrdom operation as
Moussaoui.

Reid failed in an attempt to blow up an American Airlines plane from Paris
to Miami in December 2001 after passengers and crew tackled him as he
tried to ignite explosives in his shoe. He was sentenced to life
imprisonment in January 2003.

CONTRADICTORY STATEMENTS

Moussaoui testified Reid was to join him on September 11. He later said he
was friends with Reid but had never talked to him specifically about the
plot.

Moussaoui's claims last month contradicted his previous statements when he
pleaded guilty last year. At that time he said he was not part of the
September 11 plot but was meant to be in a second wave of attacks.

Prosecutors called a psychiatrist as a rebuttal witness who disagreed with
the defense's mental health experts, who have diagnosed Moussaoui with
schizophrenia.

Raymond Patterson, a forensic psychiatrist, said Moussaoui had a
personality disorder but no major mental illness.

After closing arguments on Monday, the jury will begin deliberating.

For the 2nd day in a row, several family members of people who died on
September 11 testified for the defense.

Lawyers were not permitted to ask the witnesses what sentence they thought
Moussaoui should receive, but many of the family members spoke of the need
to overcome vengeance.

Relatives of 2 people who died on board United Flight 93, which crashed in
Pennsylvania after passengers fought back, spoke of how they wanted to
remember their loved ones.

"I would like to be able to be a voice for reconciliation in the world,"
said Alice Hoglan, whose son Mark Bingham died on Flight 93.

Paula Shapiro, a social worker whose son Eric died in the World Trade
Center, said she was working with an organization seeking alternatives to
retribution in response to September 11.

Asked how she wanted her son to be remembered, Shapiro said: "As someone
like me ... who values not only being in this country but also the values
of this country."

(source: Reuters)

***************

'Zacarias was the child I never had a problem with'----Next week a New
York jury will decide whether Zacarias Moussaoui, the '20th hijacker' who
helped the 9/11 bombers plan their attacks, will be executed. His mother
Acha El-Wafi has attended his trial, befriending some of the bereaved
families. She talks to Angelique Chrisafis about what went so wrong with
her 'sweet, affectionate child'


Only in the quiet moments, when she is sitting alone is her surburban
house in south-eastern France with its sea view and framed pictures of her
children on the wall, does Acha el-Wafi wonder if she did anything wrong
bringing up her son, Zacarias. "But how could it have been my fault?" she
asks. "I loved my four children and I never asked for anything in return."

El-Wafi says she isn't to blame for the fact that at 14 she was forced
into an arranged marriage in Morocco with an alcoholic older man, who
moved her to France, and beat and starved her and their children. She had
no choice but to put the children in a French orphanage when she left her
husband, illiterate and penniless, aged 24. "But I went back to fetch them
a year later when I'd found a job," she says. And yet, though she says she
did her best for her children, her "sweet affectionate child" Zacarias
Moussaoui would grow up to become the al-Qaida "hanger-on" who is
currently awaiting a death penalty or life sentence after pleading guilty
to conspiring with the 19 men who carried out the September 11 suicide
attacks on New York and Washington. El-Wafi blames her son's
transformation on the lack of a father figure, the racism the young
Zacarias encountered growing up in France, and later his encounter in
London with fundamentalist Islamist preachers.

Moussaoui, 37, a French citizen, is the only person to be charged in the
US in connection with 9/11. But El-Wafi believes that although he is an
Islamist, he was not involved in September 11 and is the victim of a show
trial by the US government which, she says, "needs to find a scapegoat".

"There is no justice for Zacarias," she says. "This case is just a piece
of theatre, a spectacle that the US has to perform for its audience. It's
a masquerade and I am helpless to do anything. Jacques Chirac doesn't care
because my son is an Arab so means nothing. If my son was called
Jean-Pierre or Jean-Paul, France would have stood up and done something
for him."

El-Wafi, 59, a matronly figure, went to the US to meet and sympathise with
parents and relatives of victims of the September 11 attacks, which she
utterly condemns. "The relatives are very, very good people," she says.
She appeared for the television cameras outside the Virginia courthouse
waving a photo of her son in a Hawaiian shirt to prove that he was once
just a "normal man". She went to London to meet the preacher Abu Hamza and
to find out how he "turned" her son. She publicly denounced her elder son,
Adb Samad, when he wrote a bestselling family memoir in which he accused
her of being cruel to her children and incapable of human kindness.

But this week, as Zacarias Moussaoui's court-appointed defence team argued
that he was a paranoid schizophrenic, picking apart his dysfunctional,
deprived childhood and showing videos of his two schizophrenic sisters,
El-Wafi has taken to her bed. In Narbonne, the southern French town where
she lives, she hasn't changed out of her nightclothes for days. Doctors
have diagnosed bronchitis and the anti- biotics aren't working because of
the stress caused by journalists asking questions, she says in a series of
long phone conversations after she withdraws an invitation to visit on the
grounds that she cannot host me in her pyjamas. She is deciding whether to
drag herself back to the US for the sentencing: the jury is expected to
retire to consider Moussaoui's fate on Monday. "But it's all pointless,"
she says. "The outcome was decided a long time ago. This is just a
circus."

Moussaoui, who was born in France, was arrested by the FBI in August 2001
and held on immigration charges. He had attended flight training school in
Minnesota earlier that year and had aroused suspicion for trying to learn
how to fly a Boeing 747. He was in custody at the time of the September 11
attacks. But prosecutors argued that he knew about the 9/11 plan in
advance and concealed what he knew from FBI interrogators. Last year
Moussaoui pleaded guilty to 6 counts of conspiracy to attack the US. His
erratic behaviour in court in recent weeks has included outbursts against
Jews and Americans and comments that he wished that more people had died
on September 11.

El-Wafi says she knows he is not guilty of the 9/11 attacks because he
told her in a letter and in a prison visit. When she saw him in court last
month, for the first time in almost three years, she said he was
unrecognisable, he was "bloated" and she felt he had been drugged. She
claims he is being held "in a cell measuring 2 metres by three metres, is
woken every half an hour, has a light over his head and doesn't know if it
is day or night". She says this amounts to torture.

"His outbursts in court have broken my heart. I just think about the
relatives of the victims," she says. "I don't agree with anything he says.
But what would you expect him to do, shut up every day in a tiny cell. He
never sees anyone - he is tortured and drugged, has electric shocks, and
then he is let out of his cell and he is supposed to say thanks for
bringing me out, he is supposed to speak nicely.

"Yes, he is an Islamist. He has associated with bad people. But judge him
for what he has done. He had nothing to do with September 11, that is for
sure. George Bush knew there would be an attack, the FBI and CIA knew it.
They didn't do enough to stop it, and this court case is a piece of
theatre."

She now rejects her son's court-appointed defence lawyers, despite having
spent months in France helping them gather documents and find witnesses
from his childhood. The defence argues that Moussaoui is mentally ill -
both his sisters have been treated for schizophrenia and his estranged
father is in a mental institution in France. But El-Wafi disagrees, saying
that defence psychologists have not interviewed her son because he refuses
to cooperate. Nor does she think Moussaoui is seeking to become a martyr.
She believes he changed his plea to guilty because he thought he could
save himself. "He does not want to be a martyr," she says. "For years, he
wanted to defend himself in court. He wanted to try to get out of this
mess."

El-Wafi did not testify, but if she goes to the US for the sentence, she
says, she would like to give a speech. "I want to explain one thing. That
no one is only good and no one is only bad - circumstances make you what
you are. You can be good, but things can happen to you that make you bad -
things in your life can push you over the edge, like racism. Some people
are very good, very nice, but they have problems and become bad."

El-Wafi was born in Morocco's Middle Atlas in 1944. At 2, when her father
died, her mother was too poor to raise all the children and Acha was given
to her uncle who brought her up in what she remembers as an idyllic
childhood -"those memories are the only thing that keep me going today".
At 14, she had an arranged marriage with a builder and a former boxer,
Omar Moussaoui. He was 27 and she had never met him before. Her education
consisted of little more than sewing and cookery lessons; she didn't want
to marry but had no choice.

Omar Moussaoui, it has emerged in court, was a violent drunk who beat her.
In Morocco, she had two sons who died within a year of each other, the
first of dehydration at six months, the second after a botched
circumcision when he was a week old. "I have lost two children. I know
what it's like to watch a child die. I know what death feels like. No one
can tell me what death is, but none of that seems to matter to anyone
now," she says.

Her husband moved to southern France looking for building work and Acha,
now with 2 daughters, Nadia and Jamila, followed. Two more sons were born
and the family moved around, settling in Mulhouse near the German border.
Moussaoui drank his wages and beat and starved the family, the New York
court heard, controlling his wife by withholding food from her and the
children, knocking some of her teeth out and putting her in hospital
several times.

"He tried to kill me," she says. "Once when Jamila was five, because she
was sucking her thumb at the table, he attacked her with a wine glass. He
split her head open. She needed stitches. When I was with him, I weighed
38kg - I was wasting away from fear. Every time he beat me, he would mark
me, bruise me, but I tried not to show the marks."

She filed for divorce in 1972, when Zacarias, her youngest child, was
three. She put the children in an orphanage. "I had nothing. How could I
look for work with four children under my arm?" A year later, after a
series of menial jobs, she got a job as a cleaner for France Telecom and
came back to fetch them.

She took night courses to learn to read and write and worked her way up to
a job in the post room at France Telecom. When Zacarias was 12 they moved
south to Narbonne, where he spent his teenage years hanging out with
friends and going to the local nightclub. She built a house on a plot in a
residential suburb, proud that all her children had their own rooms. She
spoke Arabic to the children but they replied in French, saying, "We're
not in Morocco, Mum, we're here now." They celebrated both Christian and
Muslim festivals because she says she wanted them to integrate.

"I'm sorry to say this, but Zacarias was the child I never ever had a
problem with. Even as a baby, he was a good, placid boy. He slept straight
through until 6am. No one ever had a complaint to make about him at
school. As a teenager, he went out, he saw his friends. He loved American
films, he wore American clothes. If a French film came on TV, he would
complain, 'Oh no, not this boring stuff.' If an American film came on, he
could sit watching it all night. I ask myself, what have they done to him
to make him hate America now?"

But she says the racism he faced was acute. "He studied hard, he got his
exams and diplomas, but the racist names, the racist abuse would come
every day. That is the reality of life France. He would come in and go
straight to his bedroom, and I would ask why and he would say, 'They
called me a dirty Arab again.' I would say, 'It's just boys being
naughty,' but I didn't know the truth of it. He would go out to a local
nightclub, he would shower, make himself look nice but the bouncer
wouldn't let him in, calling him a nigger or an Arab.

"Once, my daughter Jamila was invited to a boyfriend's house. She came
back early. The boy's father had said he didn't want his son walking
around with a 'dirty Arab' on his arm. The next day I went to work and the
hospital called me. She had cut her wrists. She was 17."

>From the age of 15 to 22, Zacarias, a keen tennis player, had a steady
girlfriend called Karine with whom he would enter dancing competitions.
She was French, blonde and blue-eyed and he was thinking about spending
his life with her, she says. "But one day her father said to Zacarias:
'Don't think you'll ever have a place around my table,' because he was an
Arab. He was very sensitive. That affected him badly."

On the telephone from prison in America, she says, he told her: "Mum, I've
done my time with French racism. I'm never going back to France."

When Zacarias and his brother were in their early 20s, El-Wafi says, they
were living it up at home with their friends. They had student grants and
she told them to contribute some money to the household, but she and
Zacarias fell out and he left. Shortly afterwards, he left for London "to
perfect his English". She kept up with what he was doing only through what
he told his sister.

El-Wafi says the British government is partly to blame for what happened
to her son. She claims he was a vulnerable man who was embittered by
racism when he arrived in London and was indoctrinated by Abu Hamza and
radical preachers at the Finsbury Park mosque.

"I went to see Abu Hamza myself. I wanted to understand him, to understand
what had gone on. He was a monster. I have never met anyone who preached
such hatred. It is him that has destroyed the youth of Europe. The British
sentenced him to seven years in prison, but how many children are dead or
in prison now because of him? He was their master, he was their teacher.
England must bear its part of the guilt because that country allowed Hamza
to preach this hatred."

El-Wafi can't talk about what will happen after her son's sentencing. "It
is too sad, too sad for me. The sky has fallen in on my head." When she
attended court last month, Moussaoui ignored her. "It was because I helped
the defence lawyers and he didn't want me to," she said. "But I know that
he saw I was there.

"He once said to me, 'Mum, don't cry about it. They want my head on a
plate, so I will give it to them on a silver platter.' Whether he is
condemned to life or death, he will become a martyr - not for himself, but
worse, for the people who will come after him".

(source: Guardian)






NEW YORK:

Death penalty defense pursued ---- Men accused of killing state trooper in
Big Flats appeared in court


The attorney for the man accused of shooting state trooper Andrew Sperr to
death last month wants help preparing for a death penalty defense, even
though there is currently no death penalty statute in New York state.

Attorney Richard W. Rich Jr., who represents suspect Anthony Horton, asked
Chemung County Judge James Hayden on Thursday to appoint a mitigation
expert, a defense witness who would help defend Horton in a capital case.

Hayden denied the motion, stating that the case is still under state
jurisdiction, but Rich said he's concerned that federal prosecutors are
interested in the case.

"The U.S. Attorney's Office is investigating. The only purpose for that
would be the death penalty, so we're obviously concerned about that," Rich
told reporters after the court appearance.

Horton and codefendant Bryan Adams appeared in front of Hayden along with
their attorneys for routine motions Thursday. Adams' brother Wayne will
appear with his counsel at 9 a.m. today.

Horton is charged with a 10-count indictment, including aggravated murder,
a recently created charge that carries a mandatory sentence of life
without parole.

Authorities believe Horton and the others held up the Big Flats branch of
Chemung Canal Trust Co. around noon March 1, and that Horton shot Sperr
during a traffic stop only minutes after the robbery.

Bryan and Wayne Adams also face numerous counts, including 2nd-degree
murder, in connection with the bank holdup and Sperr's death.

Rich and Bryan Adams' attorney David Rynders also requested additional
time to review evidence provided by the prosecution before making their
pretrial motions.

"I just received it (Wednesday). I haven't even had a chance to look at it
yet," Rich said.

Rynders also complained that he received voluminous files of prosecution
evidence hours before Thursday's court appearance.

"We're going through a large volume of documents we've been given by the
district attorney and we're waiting for the rest," Rynders said. "I don't
know our defense yet, I haven't seen the evidence. They talked about all
the evidence they have, but we still haven't seen it."

Hayden adjourned Horton's case to May 4 to give Rich more time to review
evidence and file additional motions. He also scheduled both cases to come
back May 25 to make sure discovery has been complied with and consider any
other motions before scheduling trial dates.

In the meantime, no decision has been made regarding a possible federal
takeover of the case, but the district attorney's office is ready to
proceed either way, said First Assistant District Attorney Charles
Metcalfe.

"Discussions are still continuing. I'm providing (the U.S. Attorney's
Office) with information as we get it, so they can make a decision,"
Metcalfe said. "They have agreed if it does go as a federal case, they
will appoint me and (Chemung County) District Attorney John Trice as
special assistant prosecutors.

"We're ready to move forward," Metcalfe added. "We have a very solid
case."

(source: Star-Gazette)