| 9/11 Families Testify in Moussaoui Defense
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Families of Sept. 11, 2001, victims, brought forward by lawyers trying to spare the life of terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, pressed their point Thursday that they don't seek revenge for their loss.
Testimony from about a dozen relatives was meant to counter the emotional punch of nearly four dozen witnesses who gave heartbreaking testimony for prosecutors about the impact of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Among the defense witnesses Thursday was Andrea LeBlanc of New Hampshire, who lost her husband Robert, a retired geography professor, on the United Airlines plane that struck the second of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York.
She recalled watching TV when that plane hit, finding out hours later her husband was on it, and the pain of having to tell her kids. "To their credit, they're all their father's children," said LeBlanc, an opponent of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "There's never angry words, no recrimination or vengeance-seeking."
Court rules prohibited witnesses on either side from opining on the choice jurors will face when deliberations begin next week — whether Moussaoui should get the death penalty or life in prison.
But the defense witnesses left the unmistakable message that they opposed execution for Moussaoui, as they talked about how they have devoted their lives to reconciliation rather than vengeance.
Alice Hoglan, the mother of a public relations man, Mark Bingham, who died on United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, said she had tried since Sept. 11 to embody the values of her son, "who embraced everyone."
Bingham was flying to San Francisco that day for the wedding of a fraternity brother, an Egyptian Muslim.
His mother said that she and other relatives of Flight 93 victims now sponsor athletic events and hope to create a scholarship in Bingham's name.
Paula Shapiro, who lost her son, Eric, an insurance executive who worked on the 89th floor of the second tower, said she was proud to learn he had spent his last moments helping others try to get out of the building.
"He acted with honor and thought of someone else before himself," she said.
Since the tragedy, Shapiro, a social worker who was on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico on Sept. 11, said she has devoted her efforts to promoting her son's and country's main values: "fairness, understanding and compassion."
Shapiro now lives in California and works with an organization opposed to retribution and violence in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
Moussaoui, as he was led from the courtroom during a recess, said, "America, you will be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah."
Marilynn Rosenthal, a medical professor from Ann Arbor, Mich., who lost her son Josh in the attack on the World Trade Center, said Wednesday her family does not want to "get caught in a whirlpool of sadness and anger."
Outside the courthouse, she said she testified for the defense "because I thought it was the right thing to do." Asked why she opposed a death penalty, she said, "Moussaoui is the wrong person to be on trial. There are people in the custody of the U.S. government who were central planners." She called Moussaoui's role in the attacks "marginal."
Some victims' families disapproved of the defense testimony.
Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon, said she found it "deeply disturbing ... to hear that any 9/11 family member would take the witness stand on behalf of Zacarias Moussaoui. ... The fear that execution at our hands will martyr Moussaoui shows a misunderstanding of the jihadi cult of death."
But outside the courthouse, Rosenthal said, "Nobody speaks for all the 9/11 families."
Moussaoui is the only person charged in this country in the attacks. The jury deciding his fate has already declared him eligible for the death penalty by determining that his actions caused at least one death on Sept. 11.
Even though Moussaoui was in jail in Minnesota at the time of the attacks, the jury ruled that lies he told federal agents a month before the attacks kept authorities from identifying and stopping some of the hijackers.
Moussaoui has pleaded guilty to conspiring with al-Qaida to fly planes into U.S. buildings, but not on Sept. 11.
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