WASHINGTON — A federal judge Thursday banned prosecutors from seeking the death penalty against Zacarias Moussaoui or using any evidence or testimony at his trial that links the alleged terrorist conspirator to the Sept. 11 attacks.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of Alexandria, Va., leaves the government with several options for prosecuting the only person charged in connection with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which killed about 3,000 people.
Prosecutors could turn to the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., to reverse the judge's order and allow them to return to her courtroom with the death penalty and Sept. 11 evidence reinstated in the case.
Or they could transfer the case against the former flight student to a military tribunal, where the government would have more control over how Moussaoui is tried and what punishment he might receive. Paul J. McNulty, the U.S. attorney overseeing the case, said the government was still considering its options.
The judge found that Moussaoui could not get a fair trial in her courtroom after prosecutors defied her order to allow other captive terrorist suspects to assist him by testifying that he was not a part of the Sept. 11 operation.
The government contended that such an arrangement would seriously compromise national security by allowing terrorists to communicate with one another and try to circumvent the U.S. judicial system.
That clash -- pitting the desire of the executive branch to prosecute suspected terrorists against fundamental principles of the judicial system -- has delayed the case for nearly a year. It was initially billed as the first, and perhaps only, open civilian court trial to rise out of the terrorist tragedy.
The stakes are enormous for the government, especially as the Bush administration seeks to hold someone other than the 19 suicide hijackers accountable for the mass murders at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a farm field in Pennsylvania.
A trial on the Sept. 11 charges in an open, federal court had promised to allow victims and relatives of the dead to have their say before a judge and jury, and it would have provided the government's first public airing of evidence obtained in the massive federal investigation.
