"Zacarias Moussaoui came to this country to kill as many Americans as he could. In this trial you have heard from the defendant himself that is exactly what he did," prosecutor David Raskin told the jury.
But Moussaoui's court-appointed defense team tried to save his life after a tense three-and-a-half week trial by branding him a lifelong loser, desperate for a place in history alongside the September 11 hijackers.
"Moussaoui was not involved in the 9/11 plot, no matter what he says," defense counsel Edward MacMahon said of the only person ever tried in the United States in connection with the 2001 attacks.
He told jurors "no one will ever know" if the September 11 attacks could have been stopped had Moussaoui, who admitted being a would-be Al Qaeda suicide pilot, had told investigators of the plot.
The nine men and three women of the jury retired to consider whether the 37-year-old Frenchman is eligible for the death penalty over government claims that he "lied with lethal intent" and was therefore culpable in the attacks.
They met for 90 minutes on Wednesday, after hearing instructions from Judge Leonie Brinkema who told them to act as impartial judges of the evidence presented in the trial. "You don't represent those affected by 9-11," she said.
Prosecutor David Novak told the jury to "hold accountable the person who was brazen enough to look you in the face and tell you how proud he was to participate in that horrible, horrible crime".
Moussaoui, who had previously admitted conspiring to fly planes into buildings for Al Qaeda but denied a role in September 11, stunned the trial on Monday by claiming that he had been tapped to fly a fifth plane into the White House on that fateful day.
Prosecutors say that Moussaoui should have told investigators that Al Qaeda was planning to fly planes into US buildings when he was arrested in August 2001, after he attracted suspicion at a flight school in Minnesota.
"He chose Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, and as a result of that 2,971 people are dead and that is what this case is about," said Raskin.
Reflecting the often bizarre tone of the trial, MacMahon berated his own client, calling him "ignorant" and "prejudiced" and accusing him of telling "a plethora of lies".
"You can't believe anything this man says," MacMahon said, recalling Moussaoui's sensational offer to testify against himself for the prosecution, a step that would have all but guaranteed his execution.
"He's now trying to write a role for himself in history, when the truth is he was an Al Qaeda hang-around and a nuisance who people wanted to get rid of," the defense lawyer said. "Ladies and gentlemen, as in everything else in Zacarias Moussaoui's life, he will fail."
"Mr Moussaoui [has] absolute contempt for every one of us. He believes that all of you, all of you sitting in that box, that just because you are American, that you want to kill him."
MacMahon also said that the government's case that Moussaoui's lies prevented authorities taking steps to forestall the September 11 plot was "hopeful speculation".
To demonstrate government bungling, the defense presented evidence of other signs of the impending attacks that US intelligence had failed to detect.
"The government needs jurors who have seen The Wizard of Oz all the way through and still think there is a wizard," MacMahon said.
If the jury decides Moussaoui is eligible for capital punishment, new hearings will start to decide on whether he should be executed.
Relatives of those who died in the September 11 attacks meanwhile delivered damning verdicts as the jury began deliberating.
"The whole thing is a farce, this guy wants to die," New Yorker Alexander Santora said. "He is guilty, he has admitted it. You have to send him to solitary confinement for the next 100 years and at least he will wake up every morning with the guilt."
The drama in the Moussaoui trial came as a judge in the same court building on Wednesday sentenced an Arab-American student to 30 years in prison for conspiring to kill US President George W. Bush and for supporting Al Qaeda.
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 25, was found guilty last November on nine counts of plotting to kill Bush, conspiracy to hijack a plane and offering to aid Bin Laden's terror network.
However, Judge Gerald Bruce Lee rejected a prosecution call for a life sentence, noting that Abu Ali had never taken any action toward these ends. "He didn't take any step in the US," the judge said.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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