A mother is allowed - just

Associated Press gives an account of the ending of the Moussaoui trial, with the judge deflating his self-aggrandizing statements by informing him:

“You will spend the rest of your life in a supermaximum security prison. ... It's quite clear who won ... and who lost. You came here to be a martyr in a great big bang of glory but to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper.”

I do not suppose Zacarias Moussaoui knows who T. S. Eliot is or what he did but even he must have understood the gist of what he was being told.

One reason why I approve of the jury’s decision to sentence him to life imprisonment (interesting that it is the jury that decides in these cases, not the judge) rather than having him executed is that there will be less chance of dumb Europeans and moonbat Americans holding candle-lit vigils, awarding the monstrous creature prizes and generally making complete fools of themselves.

It may happen anyway but not so much.

According to the same report:

“In France, Moussaoui's mother, Aicha El Wafi, said, "Now he is going to die in little doses. He is going to live like a rat in a hole. What for? They are so cruel."

French authorities said Thursday they may eventually press the United States to have Moussaoui serve his life sentence in France under agreements providing for transfer of convicts. They were awaiting formal word of his sentencing conditions.”

The likelihood of the man being handed over to the French authorities are remote. It will be interesting to see how hard they will try for that transfer.

One appreciates that a mother feels differently from the rest of the world, but it might be a good idea if Aicha El Wafi made up her mind what line she was going to take.

Part of the defence was that little Zacarias was badly treated by his father, who also beat his mother; that he had spent time in children’s homes; that his sisters, who appeared on a video talking about their little “sweetheart” brother were suffering from mental problems; that he had been badly treated by his French girlfriend’s parents.

Indeed, that is still the line the BBC is taking. But the report also mentions the supposed fact, also advanced by Moussaoui’s mother and discussed in the Daily Telegraph today, that the lad was perfectly OK until he came to London and was taken in hand by various extremist preachers.

“Young men like Moussaoui were fed into the machine and emerged as hardline religious terrorists, primed for slaughter. His mother, Aicha al-Wafi, who along with her husband was born in Morocco, has echoed the complaints of the French counter-intelligence service, the DST, accusing the British authorities of being far too permissive in the years before 2001.

"I would say that England is responsible for many things because it allowed this fever to spread around the country," she told the Canadian television channel CBC. "These young people go to England, and then they scream hatred and vengeance in front of mosques. They let the fever spread." His brother, Abd-Samad, agreed: "I believe that Britain has fed a snake at its bosom, and has been bitten by the snake.''”

The detailed description of Moussaoui's radicalization in Britain, his travels to military training camps and subsequent return to this country (needless to say) in the nineties, disposes of his own screaming outbursts about his particular hatred for America. Britain certainly did feed a snake at its bosom.

While it is undoubtedly true that Britain, much to the disgust of other countries in the West and the Middle East, allowed extremist preachers to run riot for years and extremist organizations to multiply for as long (hence the name Londonistan, much used by security services in other countries), I do feel that, perhaps, the media should stop quoting all these various contradictory excuses for Moussaoui’s criminal behaviour produced by his family.

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