Breeze Perspectives: Zacarias Moussaoui does not deserve to die
By Garrett Hooe, contributing writer
Posted on April 10, 2006

You did it this time, Zacarias Moussaoui. In a display of brilliance only a suicide terrorist could be capable of, you admitted to conspiring with al-Qaeda to hijack airplanes and fly them into our buildings, built and filled by hard-working Americans who would love nothing more than to have a baseball bat and five minutes alone with you. 

Like Jim Smith. Smith’s wife, Moira, was called up to the front lines that September morning. Her New York Police Department unit was one of the first on the scene to help victims, and she was actually photographed helping a bloody businessman to safety shortly before the south tower collapsed on her and the asthma victim she was treating on the third floor. When one hundred floors of building come down on you, there are no remains. Smith’s daughter, only a year old at the time, never got to know her heroic mother.  

Or maybe Tony Sanseviro, a member of the Fire Department of New York, would like to have a few words with you. His longtime friend and fellow firefighter, Dan Suhr, was rendered unconscious as he advanced toward the burning towers. After your buddies flew into the towers, the choice of the people trapped above was only one of how they would die. Many chose to jump. One particular person decided that jumping was their only option and landed on Suhr traveling at about 120 miles per hour. After being unconscious for a period of time, Suhr died at a nearby hospital. Sanseviro said of witnessing his friend’s cause of death that “[You] kind of lose your will to live.”

There were other stories too — stories of a Vietnamese immigrant who said coming to the United States to live was one of his greatest gifts, who would ultimately be killed at the Pentagon. A software engineer who had emigrated from India expected to be back in Los Angeles by lunchtime on Sept. 11, 2001, his wife said, but his flight out of Boston ended up in the north tower.

Despite the prosecution trying its best to get you off the hook by bungling witness testimony, the judge showed some common sense and decided that the case should continue. The jury found that you are eligible for the death sentence, but I think that would let you off easy. After all, in your backward view of the Muslim faith you claim to practice, you just may be considered a martyr if you fry in the chair. Then you could spend all eternity with your 40 virgins. I say we make you wait a while.

You deserve a life sentence, Zacarias. As much as Americans want your blood, you declared in the courtroom a week ago that we would never get it. Well, you’re right, at least for now. If you believe half of what you say, rotting in an American jail cell would seem to be the worst thing for you. That should give you time to think about missing your opportunity to join Mohammed Atta and the other 18 terrorists on Sept. 11 and how in reality you are a failure even to those who believed in you. Clearly, you were not meant to be blessed by Allah, because you were arrested a month before the attacks. You never completed your “holy mission;” in fact, if the FBI had been on their toes, you would have screwed it up for everyone. That thought should gnaw on you during your sure-to-be-pleasant stay at a maximum-security federal prison. 

Those virgins should have to wait a couple years.

Garrett Hooe is a senior political science major.