Moussaoui told he’ll ‘die with a whimper’

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was sentenced Thursday to spend his life in the country’s strictest prison, scolding Americans on the way for missing a chance to learn from him why they are hated by al-Qaida terrorists.

Capping four years of legal maneuvering and a two-month trial, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema sentenced the unrepentant 37-year-old Frenchman to six life sentences. She told him he would “die with a whimper,” isolated and not in the glory of martyrdom.

In a parting shot, Moussaoui, the only person charged in the U.S. in the nation’s deadliest terrorist attack, accused Americans of “hypocrisy … beyond any belief.”

Special rules at the federal super maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo., where Brinkema sent Moussaoui, will bar the terrorist from contact with the outside world for the rest of his life.

Putting aside the abusive epithets and clownish comments he became known for, Moussaoui sought to offer a sober explanation of his hatred for the United States.

Moussaoui directed what may be his last public words to three relatives of victims killed on Sept. 11, 2001 – relatives who moments before stood in court, faced Moussaoui and described loved ones lost the day four hijacked jetliners crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

He said Americans feel only their own pain and wondered if they would ever consider “how many people the CIA has destroyed.” He called the trial “a wasted opportunity for this country to understand … why people like me, like (hijacker) Mohamed Atta and the rest have so much hatred for you.”

Moments later, Brinkema refused to be interrupted by Moussaoui as she disputed his declaration Wednesday that “America, you lost. … I won.”

She told Moussaoui that after the proceeding everyone else in the room would be “free to go any place they want. They can go outside and they can feel the sun, … smell the fresh air, … hear the birds. They can eat what they want tonight. They can associate with whom they want.”

She went on: “You will spend the rest of your life in a super-maximum security prison. … It’s quite clear who won … and who lost.”

“You came here to be a martyr in a great big bang of glory,” she said, “but to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper.”