US: A jury of 10 men and two women has started hearing evidence to determine if 37-year-old Zacharias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, should be executed for conspiring with those responsible for the 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001.
Moussaoui, sometimes referred to as "the 20th hijacker", pleaded guilty last year to charges that included conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism and conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy but has denied any involvement in the 9/11 attacks, which killed almost 3,000 people.
The jurors include a Muslim woman who was born in Iran and a man who served as a US navy lieutenant in the first Gulf War from 1990 to 1991.
In a trial expected to last three weeks, the jury must decide between the death penalty and life in prison, the only two sentences that can be handed down.
Roads were sealed off and police marksmen were deployed around the courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, a few miles from the Pentagon, where one of the hijacked aircraft crashed in 2001.
Relatives of the victims watched proceedings on closed circuit television screens at courthouses in cities across the United States but Judge Leonie Brinkema said that some classified evidence could be heard only by the jury.
Moussaoui has claimed that Osama bin Laden sent him to the US to take part in a separate hijack operation and that he was not involved in preparations for 9/11.
He was in jail at the time of the attacks, having been arrested for immigration irregularities.
Prosecutors will argue that he is responsible for the deaths caused by the 2001 attacks because he failed to warn the FBI about them.
Defence lawyers are expected to argue that the FBI had more information about the 9/11 hijackers than Moussaoui had. They will say that, even if the FBI knew all that Moussaoui knew about the plans, they would still have failed to stop the attacks.
Judge Brinkema refused a request by Moussaoui, who has made a number of apparently irrational outbursts during previous court appearances, to conduct his own legal defence.
At the end of yesterday's morning session, Moussaoui told a member of his defence team: "Just to let you know, you're not my lawyer, thanks a lot."
The defendant's mother, Aicha el-Wafi, who has travelled from France for the trial, told CNN that her son was being made a scapegoat for 9/11 and was being condemned for his own statements rather than his actions.
"All they can have against him is the things that he said, the words that he has used, but actual acts that he committed, there aren't any," she said.
Earlier, Ms el-Wafi told the AFP news agency that she held out little hope for Moussaoui, whom she has not seen since 2002.
"It is I who brought him into the world and I am going to see him in hell, that's all. I am going to be in hell myself, but that's how it is," she said.
Some relatives of 9/11 victims have made clear that they view Moussaoui's death as a necessary part of their own grieving process.
Hamilton Peterson of Bethesda, Maryland, whose father and stepmother died on hijacked Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, said he wanted someone to be held accountable for their deaths.
"I believe Moussaoui is an excellent candidate for the death penalty.
"He is nothing less than a mass murderer," he said.