Zacarias Moussaoui should spend his life in prison instead of being executed for his role in the September 11 attacks on the US, a jury has found.
Moussaoui, the only person convicted in the United States in connection with the deadly attacks, will be sentenced tomorrow by a federal judge.
Court spokesman Edward Adams
Federal prosecutors had asked the jury to sentence Moussaoui to death. But jurors, who spent about 41 hours deliberating before reaching the verdict, were divided on whether he should be executed.
Earlier this month, the same jury of nine men and three women found Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty. The jury verdict followed a second, two-week phase of the sentencing trial.
The 37-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent was arrested three weeks before the September 11 thattacks in 2001 and said he was meant to pilot a fifth airplane into the White House as part of the plot.
He pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy, three of which carried a maximum death sentence. Moussaoui also said he had no remorse for the attacks in which about 3,000 people died.
The verdict was read outside the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, not far from the Pentagon, the site of one of the deadly 2001 attacks, by court spokesman Edward Adams.
The jury did not unanimously find that Moussaoui's actions resulted in the deaths of about 3,000 people on that September day.
"No jurors found that the execution of Zacarias Moussaoui will create a martyr for radical Muslim fundamentalists and to al Qaeda in particular," Mr Adams said.
"Three jurors found that Zacarias Moussaoui's role in the 9/11 operation, if any, was minor," he said.
The government, which had demanded the death penalty, has seen other high-profile cases in its war on terrorism deflate.