From IBD:
Posted 5/4/2006
The Law: "America, you lost! I won!" shouted Zacarias Moussaoui after a jury sentenced him to life in prison for his involvement in 9-11. Sad to say, he may be right.
Across the world, fundamentalist jihadists no doubt rejoiced at the news Moussaoui got a life term, not death, for taking part in the murder of nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
The jury members who decided this certainly felt they had good reason for doing so. We can't second-guess them too much. But we continue to believe that the fullness of justice demanded not prison, but death for Moussaoui — and others like him.
It probably won't be long before Moussaoui will be demanding visits from radical imams and his family. He'll also likely insist that U.S. taxpayers — who'll fork out roughly $100,000 a year for his incarceration — also provide him with a prayer rug and Halal-prepared food, the Islamic equivalent of kosher.
And why not? These are all reasonable requests, the kind routinely granted in U.S. prisons today. In a year or so, we'll also be apprised by Amnesty International or some other "human rights group" that Moussaoui, far from being a fanatic bent on the destruction of the West, is in fact a "political prisoner."
Who knows? We might even see an appeal on his behalf, on the grounds that he was "bipolar" and thus unable to form true judgments about the moral content of his acts.
It's even possible that the rotten childhood that Moussaoui is said to have had will serve as his ticket out of jail. Family members spoke movingly about his violent childhood and how he was brutalized by his father. That, in fact, was one of the "aggravating factors" cited by the jury for sending Moussaoui to jail rather than the gallows.
Family and friends alike insist Moussaoui was completely normal before moving from Montpellier, France, to London in 1993. So maybe he's just a victim of racism; as his mother said, it was "because of his words, his color, his race, that he was sentenced to life."
He went to London to study business and learn English. Next thing you know, he's a terrorist-in-training at al-Qaida's notorious Khalden training camp in Afghanistan.
If this seems ridiculous, it's not. The French government is already arranging to request having Moussaoui sent back to France. Once there, who knows what would happen? Perhaps, after a few years of "good behavior," he'd be able to win back his freedom.
Don't think this won't happen. The same day Moussaoui was spewing his final curses at the U.S., convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi — implicated in the murder of 270 in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 — was in London appealing his own 27-year minimum prison sentence as too long.
Excuse our cynicism. But in this age of hypersensitivity to global legal "norms," maybe our jurisprudence should also take into account international responses to our justice.
We refer here to the radical Islamists mentioned at the top of this editorial. They must be struck dumb by our self-loathing and incomprehensible desire to accommodate those who'd destroy us. Unlike us, they see mercy where none is merited as weakness, not kindness.
What must be going through their minds? Here they sneak one of their own well-trained acolytes deep into our heartland, task him to commit unspeakable crimes against innocent Americans in service of a global jihad, and the best we can do is a little jail time.
That laughter you hear is coming from mosques and madrassas from London to Karachi. Does anyone think the next jihadist to come along will be dissuaded from evil by our justice? Whether you believe the death penalty is moral or just, there's little doubt it deters future crime. This verdict sends a message.
Some argue Moussaoui would've died an Islamic martyr. They're wrong. He wouldn't have perished in a glorious final attack on innocent infidels, but at the hands of his captors. That's humiliating.
To repeat: It's hard to fault the jury for this miscarriage. Moussaoui's case and those of other terrorists should never go to civilian courts in the first place.
We are at war, and the enemy deserves military tribunals and the justice they mete out — not the justice of everyday people who might be swayed by tales of troubled childhoods and the like.
The fact that Moussaoui will probably spend his remaining years in the "Alcatraz of the Rockies" — a supermax prison in Florence, Colo. — is of no comfort. He'll likely die immured in his old age, "with a whimper," as Judge Leonie Brinkema put it.
We only wish we could feel better about that.
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