Zacarias Moussaoui

Zacarias Moussaoui (زكريا موسوي, Zakariyyā Mūsawī; born 30 May 1968) is a French member of al-Qaeda who pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to conspiring to kill citizens of the United States as part of the 9/11 attacks.

He is serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole at the Federal ADX Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

Moussaoui is the only person ever convicted in U.S. court in connection with the 11 September attacks.

From 1982, Moussaoui, his brother and sisters, were brought up in a bungalow on the edge of the town of Narbonne.

His mother has said that she believes two 'wounding' incidents in his French adolescence contributed to the formation of an extremist sensibility: the first the day that his school careers adviser pushed him towards minor, technical studies, with "the clear implication that he was only an Arab and would need nothing more," and the second the day that the father of his teenage sweetheart warned him off because he was an Arab.

"Don't think that you will ever get your feet under my table," the man said."

According to his brother, Abd Samad Moussaoui, Zacarias loved to play handball:

"For Zacarias [his brother wrote in the Guardian], handball quickly became more than a sport—it was his passion. He was brilliant. Everyone recognized it—his trainers, his team-mates, even his opponents. For Zacarias, the future was all mapped out. He would study and play sports."

Moussaoui has been known by other names, reportedly including Abu Khaled al Sahrawi and Shaquil while he was in Oklahoma.

He holds a master's degree in International Business from South Bank University in London, having enrolled in 1993 and graduated in 1995.

He attended, amongst others, the Brixton Mosque, where he may have met Richard Reid, the future shoe bomber.

He was proselytised by groups such as al-Muhajiroun ("the Emigrants"), who leafleted people attending moderate mosques such as that in Brixton.

It is possible that he had connections with members of the Finsbury Park mosque, where the extremist Abu Hamza al-Masri taught.

French authorities began monitoring Moussaoui in 1996 when they observed him with Islamic extremists in London.

In 1998, he attended the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan, allegedly returning the next year as well.

On 16 August 2001, Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota by the FBI and charged with an immigration violation.

He aroused suspicion while taking flight training courses in Eagan, Minnesota.

On 11 December 2001, Moussaoui was indicted by a federal grand jury in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on six felony charges: conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy, conspiracy to destroy aircraft, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to murder United States employees, and conspiracy to destroy property.

Moussaoui was alleged by federal prosecutors to have been a replacement for the "first" 20th hijacker, possibly Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

Bin al-Shibh and Zakariyah Essabar were denied visas.

However, prosecutors in Moussaoui's drawn-out trial in the US had difficulty directly connecting him to the 19 participants.

Moussaoui's trial was seen in some circles as a barometer of the ability and willingness of the United States to give a fair hearing to terrorism suspects.

Others objected to the degree to which the court and especially Judge Leonie Brinkema tolerated the bizarre and threatening courtroom behavior of Moussaoui.

Moussaoui expressed contempt for the trial and court by introducing legal motions deriding Judge Brinkema, surprised onlookers by electing to represent himself in court, and rankled federal prosecutors by requesting the presence of captured al-Qaeda members as witnesses in his case.

During the trial, Moussaoui initially stated that he was not involved in the 11 September attacks, but that he was planning an attack of his own.

Some al-Qaeda members reportedly corroborated Moussaoui's statement to an extent, saying that he was involved in a plot other than 11 September, but prosecutors believed that his story had no merit.

On 3 April 2006, Moussaoui was found to be eligible for the death penalty.

Before leaving the courtroom, he was reported to have shouted, "You will never get my blood. God curse you all!"

On 3 May 2006, a jury decided against the death penalty for Moussaoui.

The next day, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

As he was led out of the courtroom, Moussaoui clapped his hands and said, "America, you lost ... I won."

Judge Brinkema responded by telling him that he would "die with a whimper" and "never get a chance to speak again".

Three jurors decided Moussaoui had only limited knowledge of the 11 September plot, and three described his role in the attacks as minor, if he had any role at all.

Moussaoui is currently incarcerated in ADX Florence, Colorado.

Aicha el-Wafi, Moussaoui's mother, was 14 when she was married to a man that she did not previously know, in Morocco.

Five years later, Moussaoui's parents moved to France, where he was born.

After enduring domestic violence, his mother left his father Omar while her four children were still young.

She raised her children on a cleaner's wages.

There was no religious education within the family.

Witnesses testified at Moussaui's trial that, as first-generation immigrants from Morocco, the family frequently faced racism in their new country.