Zacarias Moussaoui has been formally sentenced by a US federal judge to life in prison for his role in the September 11th attacks on the US.
"America you lost!" Moussaoui (37), the only person convicted for 9/11, said as he left the courtroom after hearing the jury's verdict yesterday. He clapped his hands and yelled: "I won!"
The verdict was read by US District Judge Leonie Brinkema at the courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, not far from the Pentagon, the site of one of the 2001 attacks.
"God curse America," Moussaoui shouted right before US District Judge Leonie Brinkema imposed the sentence. "God save Osama bin Laden. You'll never get him."
Ms Brinkema sentenced Moussaoui (37) to life in prison with no possibility of release.
An admitted al Qaeda operative, Moussaoui will almost certainly be sent to the maximum security federal prison in Florence, Colorado, and his words at sentencing were probably his last public comments.
Dressed in a green prisoner jumpsuit and white cap, Moussaoui walked into the courtroom flashing a "V" for victory sign with his fingers. He sat with a broad smile on his face as he waited for his sentence.
After she sentenced Moussaoui, Ms Brinkema said the jury's verdict showed that justice had been done.
"Every American, that is those who wanted to see this defendant executed and those who did not, should feel satisfied," she said.
"Mr Moussaoui, you came here to be a martyr and to die in a great bang of glory. But to quote TS Eliot, 'you will die with a whimper'."
US President Feorge W Bush welcomed the sentencing of the man he said "openly rejoiced" at the deaths on September 11th and said "evil" had been vanquished.
The French citizen of Moroccan descent was in jail on September 11th, 2001, after raising suspicions at a flight school.
Federal prosecutors had argued Moussaoui's failure to warn law enforcement officers who detained him about the upcoming attacks made him as guilty as if he had carried them out himself.
But not all members of the jury of nine men and three women, who last month found Moussaoui eligible for execution, agreed. The law requires a unanimous verdict for a sentence of death.
The verdict in the complicated case marked a defeat for government prosecutors, who had asked jurors to return the death penalty against Moussaoui, an admitted al-Qaeda member who expressed no remorse at trial for the September 11th victims.
Last year, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy, three of which could have carried a sentence of death.
Legal expert David Rossman of Boston University law school said the prosecution was hurt by evidence in the courtroom of shortcomings in the FBI's handling of the case.
"It's very easy to say the government lost in terms of public relations. . . . People will be looking at the FBI without those rose-coloured glasses."
Perhaps more important, the case took on symbolic weight from the lingering trauma of September 11th that the prosecution could not sustain.
"It was a mistake of the government to make Moussaoui the poster child for the 9/11 conspiracy to begin with," added Daniel Benjamin, a terrorism analyst and former member of the Clinton administration.