Thursday, May 4 2006 10:51 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: Al-Qaeda plotter Zacarais Moussaoui has been spared execution by a US federal jury which recommended a life in prison for his role in the September 11terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

On the seventh day of trial yesterday, the jury of nine men and three women told the presiding judge that a verdict has been reached. It came after a six week trial and more than four years of legal manoeuvring.

Moussaoui, a French national of Moroccan descent, is the only person charged in this country for the 9/11 attacks. Last month, the jury came to the conclusion that he was eligible for the death penalty for plotting the attacks.

Part of the trial involved painful images of the attacks of 9/11 including the first ever playing of the cockpit voice recorder of United Airlines Flight 93 whose passengers struggled with the hijackers that eventually brought down the passenger jet over Pennsylvania.

Moussaoui was in jail on September 11,2001 after being picked up on immigration violations. But the jury ruled that he lied to investigators that prevented them from identifying and stopping some of the hijackers on that fateful day.

Defence attorneys focussed on Moussaoui's mental health, calling experts who testified him as a delusional paranoid schizophrenic. While some of the jurors found that mental illness ran in Moussaoui's family, none found him to be so mentally ill to consider it a mitigating factor for trial.

On the witness stand, Moussaoui displayed a complete lack of remorse for the deaths he had caused, saying he was sorry only that the attacks weren't more lethal.

"America, you lost, I won," Moussaoui shouted after thejury rejected the death sentence.