ANN REALTIME REPORTING 05.03.06 1630 EDT: The jury has spoken... and confessed al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui will not be sentenced to death for what prosecutors said was Moussaoui's role in the attacks on 9/11. Moussaoui will instead serve a life sentence in federal prison, without the possibility of parole.

After an emotional six-week penalty trial that including the showing of gruesome images from 9/11, as well as the first-ever public playing of cockpit tapes from United Airlines Flight 93, jurors deliberated for seven days over whether to give Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent, the death penalty.

Jurors sentenced Moussaoui (below) to life in prison on three charges: conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national borders, conspiracy to destroy aircraft, and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. That decision was not necessarily unanimous; the number of jurors who voted for the death penalty, or for life in prison, was not revealed.

As Aero-News reported last month, the jury already ruled Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty after more than 16 hours of deliberations in late March and early April. That ruling came after Moussaoui, in a surprising statement, told the courtroom he was originally supposed to pilot a fifth airliner on 9/11 into the White House -- a revelation that even prosecutors did not necessarily believe.

Instead, federal prosecutors focused on evidence that Moussaoui did not tell authorities all he knew about the 9/11 attacks while he was in federal custody for immigration violations, one month before the fateful day.

According to the mitigating factors read outside the courtroom after the verdicts were handed down, at least one juror -- possibly more -- believed Moussaoui was only a minor player in 9/11, and did not have any significant role in planning or executing the attacks.

Moussaoui is the only person charged in the US for the 9/11 hijackings that resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, and Pentagon, and a field outside Shanksville, PA.

FMI: www.usdoj.gov