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Moussaoui jury deliberates for third dayU.S. says al Qaeda operative 'lied with lethal intent'From Phil Hirschkorn  Zacarias Moussaoui is the only person to stand trial in the U.S. in connection with the 9/11 attacks. RELATEDYOUR E-MAIL ALERTSALEXANDRIA, Virginia (CNN) -- The nine men and three women deciding the fate of Zacarias Moussaoui began their third day of deliberations Friday morning. The jury is scheduled to meet until 3 p.m. It is charged with determining whether thr al Qaeda operative should face the death penalty for lying to federal agents before the September 11, 2001, attacks. On Wednesday, jurors heard two hours of closing arguments before U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema instructed them on how to reach their verdict. "Zacarias Moussaoui came to this country to kill as many Americans as he could," said prosecutor David Raskin. He told jurors Moussaoui "killed people by lying and concealing a plot." "People died in these attacks, and they'd be alive today if he told the truth," Raskin said. "If the defendant had just told the truth, the leadership of this country would have turned everybody loose to find his al Qaeda brothers." Defense attorney Edward MacMahon said Moussaoui's testimony admitting a role in the terror attacks could not be believed. "Moussaoui was never slated, other than in his dreams, to be in the 9/11 plot," he said. He urged jurors to consider Moussaoui's testimony at the trial a "tall tale, a whopper," even for an al Qaeda member who says he's at war with the United States. MacMahon called his client an "arrogant, dangerous, stubborn man" who told a "plethora of lies" on the witness stand "to aggrandize himself." He said Moussaoui is "trying to write himself a role in history when he's an al Qaeda hanger-on and a nuisance." Did lies cost lives?The jury must decide whether lives may have been saved had Moussaoui conveyed truthful information when he was questioned three weeks before the attacks. (Verdict form Moussaoui pleaded guilty 11 months ago to all six terrorism conspiracy charges against him, and until he testified during the trial he maintained he had no advance knowledge of or role in the 9/11 plot. But Moussaoui told the jury Monday that he had known beforehand of the plot to target the twin towers of the World Trade Center and would have piloted a fifth plane into the White House -- information he withheld from the federal agents who interrogated him. (Watch what Moussaoui's fellow al Qaeda members had to say about him -- 2:06) Raskin told jurors that using leads drawn from Moussaoui's possessions, the FBI could have identified 11 of the 19 September 11 hijackers and the Federal Aviation Administration could have imposed security measures to stop them, such as banning short knives and adding them to a "no fly" list. "Between the FAA and the FBI, none of them would have been able to get on any of those planes," Raskin said. "It's a no-brainer. The FBI could have had their names, their phone numbers, their pictures in most cases, and their addresses." MacMahon cast doubt on this "hypothetical" by pointing to missed opportunities to locate two known al Qaeda terrorists, Khaled al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who entered the United States in January 2000. The CIA found out about them in March 2000 but did not tell the FBI until late August 2001. "For over 18 months, our government didn't even look for two of the real hijackers who they knew were in the United States," MacMahon said. "You cannot assume our government would have reacted the same way before 9/11 as it did since." Before his arrest on an immigration violation, Moussaoui urgently sought Boeing 747 simulator training. The suspicions he aroused at the Minnesota school prompted managers there to tip off the FBI. Two-part trialMoussaoui's trial has been divided into two parts. In the first part, now ending, the jury must answer only whether Moussaoui's false statements to federal agents after his August 2001 arrest contributed to any of the nearly 3,000 deaths caused by the 9/11 attacks. If the jury unanimously finds Moussaoui's lies resulted in deaths, relatives of 9/11 victims will be heard along with testimony about Moussaoui's mental health, and a second phase would decide if he should be executed. During the past three weeks, prosecutors contended Moussaoui lied about why he was in flight school, covered up his associates and financial sources, and refused access to his belongings, which held clues to both. As a result, they said, he furthered the conspiracy to hijack and crash planes into prominent buildings. "It's terrorism training 101," prosecutor Raskin said. "Al Qaeda trains its people to lie. The defendant had a right to remain silent. But once he started talking, he had an obligation to tell the truth." No matter what Moussaoui may have told federal agents, defense attorney MacMahon said, the information could not have been used to stop the attacks. "We will never know what could have happened in the 25 days between Mr. Moussaoui's arrest and the attacks," MacMahon said. "The government needs jurors who've seen 'The Wizard of Oz' all the way through and still think there's a wizard." 
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