Giuliani takes stand in Moussaoui trial

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The government Thursday opened the final stage of its quest to execute Zacarias Moussaoui by presenting testimony from the man who came to symbolize U.S. resilience in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Giuliani, in recounting his experience of rushing to the scene even before the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed, became the first of almost four dozen witnesses the government plans to call to re-create for jurors the agonies of that day – agonies that prosecutors say Moussaoui could have prevented and thus deserves to die for.

“Every day, I think about it,” Giuliani said. “It can be a person jumping or seeing body parts, seeing a little boy or girl at a funeral, and then I also try to remember all the wonderful heroism the firemen and the police showed that day.”

Soon after he arrived at the twin towers, Giuliani testified, he ran into three top city officials who would later die that day. He also conferred with a fourth official, his personal assistant, whose highly decorated fireman husband had already died trying to save others.

Twice the mayor himself was reported missing and feared dead, he said, describing how he became lost in a basement near ground zero while trying to get the White House on the telephone.

Moussaoui, a self-described member of the Sept. 11 plot, was arrested before the attacks. After a protracted and sometimes turbulent trial in federal court here, he was found guilty on terrorism charges. On Monday, he was found eligible for the death penalty. Now prosecutors hope to persuade the same jury to put him to death, arguing that Sept. 11 could have been prevented if Moussaoui had told investigators what he knew about the al-Qaida plot.

To demonstrate the enormity of the tragedy they want Moussaoui held accountable for, government lawyers displayed large photographs of dead police and firemen. They set up a gray model of the twin towers. They played an audio recording of a desperate flight attendant on the telephone. They aired video clips of the two planes hitting the towers, of people jumping, of the towers falling.

In addition to Giuliani, they presented the first of a series of other witnesses – some ordinary citizens who became witnesses to a nightmare as well as members of the police and fire units that responded to the attack and were swept into its vortex.

“Al-Qaida turned those buildings into slaughterhouses,” lead prosecutor Robert Spencer told the jury in his opening statement.

Defense attorney Gerald Zerkin, in his opening remarks, urged the jury to consider Moussaoui’s tortured mind, saying the defense would present expert testimony about his troubled childhood, his recruitment by Muslim extremists in England, and the mental illness and schizophrenia that run through him and his family.

When this final phase of the case ends in several weeks, Zerkin said, a sentence of life in prison with no parole would be appropriate.

“We will show you who Zacarias Moussaoui was before he became an al-Qaida wannabe,” he said. “We are going to tell you also about his whole life, so you can understand his transformation.”

To win a death sentence, prosecutors must prove at least one of three aggravating factors: that Moussaoui knowingly created a grave risk of death, that the deaths were especially heinous and cruel, and that he was involved in substantial planning for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Although Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota three weeks before the attacks, he testified last week that he had been slated to fly a plane into the White House.