Prosecutors concluded their case for executing Zacarias Moussaoui with a step-by-step account of how they possibly could have identified most of the September 11 hijackers if the al-Qaida conspirator had confessed when he was arrested a month before the suicide attacks.

The defence argued that the testimony was legally irrelevant because it supposes that Moussaoui had some obligation to confess his al-Qaida membership and his terrorist plans when he was interrogated by federal agents.

The judge promised to give the jury clear legal instructions about the issue before it begins deliberations.

Moussaoui, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges, denied involvement in the September 11 hijackings but said he was to take part in a second wave of attacks on the White House. The trial is to decide if he will be executed for his crimes.

Meanwhile, the defence began its case with a summary of the federal government's failings in tracking two known al-Qaida associates in 2000 and 2001 who were among the 19 hijackers on September 11.

The defence case will continue next week, with Moussaoui himself expected to take the stand against the advice of his court-appointed lawyers.

On Thursday Moussaoui, as he left for a recess, stated loudly that he would testify.

"I will testify, Zerkin, whether you want it or not," he said, referring to one of his lawyers, Gerald Zerkin. The 37-year-old Frenchman, the only person charged in the US in connection with the 2001 attacks, has refused to co-operate with his lawyers.

The prosecution's witness, former FBI agent Aaron Zebley, testified that Moussaoui's admission during his guilty plea last April that he received more than US$14,000 in wire transfers from a man using the name Ahad Sabet could have allowed the FBI to go through Western Union, cell phone, calling-card and motor vehicle records, as well as leases and other business materials to identify 11 of the 19 hijackers.

US district judge Leonie Brinkema barred Zebley from explicitly asserting what the FBI would have accomplished had he confessed when arrested on August 16, 2001.

But Zebley gave prosecutors some of their strongest testimony since the trial began on March 6.

Zebley implied that Moussaoui's lies when arrested while taking pilot lessons in Minnesota foreclosed several avenues of investigation that might have saved at least one of the nearly 3,000 lives lost on 9/11.

"We could have set about finding the hijackers," Zebley said.

Zebley's testimony had jurors leaning forward to follow his explanation of how FBI agents bootstrapped data from Western Union records to cell phone and calling-card numbers, to home addresses listed on business and bank transaction records, to leases and driver's licenses and other IDs recorded by landlords.

He said these methods allowed FBI agents to track the identities of 11 of the hijackers within weeks of the September 11 attacks, and that the same methods could have been used in August 2001.

MacMahon asked why the FBI didn't launch a full criminal investigation of Moussaoui in August 2001 based on 70 appeals to Washington by arresting agent Harry Samit who warned that Moussaoui was a terrorist training to hijack an airliner.

"The FBI has to have a confession ... before anybody listens?" MacMahon asked.

Zebley replied that Samit did not know all the details in Moussaoui's 2005 confession.

Defence testimony highlighted the fact that the CIA knew in March 2000 that two of the 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar had entered the United States in 2000 after attending a conference with Osama bin Laden associates in Malaysia.

But the CIA did not tell the FBI until August 23, 2001, that the pair were in the United States. Even then, the FBI did not assign a high priority to finding them.

This sentencing trial will determine whether Moussaoui is executed or imprisoned for life.

Prosecutors must prove that Moussaoui's lies resulted in at least one death on September 11 for Moussaoui to be eligible for the death penalty.

If the jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt that Moussaoui is eligible for the death penalty, the trial would move into the next phase determining whether Moussaoui should be executed. In this phase, September 11 victims and their families could testify about the impact of the attacks.

Source: China Daily