WASHINGTON, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Convicted Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui appealed on Friday the life sentence imposed on him earlier this month.

    Moussaoui, 37, who was spared the death penalty on May 4, also appealed against the judge's refusal to allow him to change his guilty plea on the six conspiracy charges.

    Moussaoui is the only person to have been charged and tried in the United States for the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

    His court-appointed lawyers said in a one-paragraph notice of appeal that Moussaoui wanted the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the final judgment and sentence he received last week at a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, and the judge's refusal of his request to withdraw his guilty plea.

    On May 8, Moussaoui filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea, saying that he lied when he testified last year that he was involved in the plot even though he knew that was a "complete fabrication."

    He said he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea because he now believed he could get a fair trial.

    Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent, was arrested in August 2001. He was to serve his life sentence in the federal supermax prison at Florence, Colorado. Enditem

Sept. 11 conspirator sentenced to life in prison

    WASHINGTON, May 3 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. jury on Wednesday sentenced a conspirator of the Sept. 11 terror attacks to a life-long jail-term for his role in the deadliest terrorist incident in U.S. history, without possibility to get released.

    Zacarias Moussaoui, 37, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent, is the first person convicted in the United States for his role in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001.

    Though already behind bars on the day of terror attacks, he pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy last year, in the only case brought in the United States in connection with the deadly attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

    Three of the six conspiracy counts made him eligible for the death penalty: committing acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, destroying aircraft and using planes as weapons of mass destruction.

    The purpose of the eight-week trial in a court in Alexandria, Virginia, was to determine whether Moussaoui deserves to die. Jurors first found that Moussaoui's lies to federal investigators a month before the attacks furthered al Qaeda's plot and directly resulted in at least some 9/11 deaths, making the defendant eligible for execution.

    In the trial's second phase, jurors weighed factors such as the heinousness of the crime and its impact on the victims' families against Moussaoui's background and mental health.

    About 30 family members of 9/11 victims, along with attack survivors and emergency responders, described how their lives have been changed. One after the other, widows and widowers, fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and friends shared heart-wrenching stories of loss.

    Perhaps the trial's most dramatic moment came when prosecutors played the cockpit voice recorder from Flight 93. It made clear passengers' efforts to retake control of the aircraft before the hijackers crashed it outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

    Defense attorneys focused on Moussaoui's mental health, calling experts who diagnosed him as a delusional paranoid schizophrenic. The jury heard that Moussaoui's troubled family history includes two sisters and an abusive father who suffer from mental illness.

    On the witness stand, Moussaoui displayed a complete lack of remorse for the 9/11 deaths, saying he was sorry only that the attacks weren't more lethal.

    His attorneys asked the jury not to give him the death penalty and make him an al Qaeda martyr. Enditem

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