Attorney General John Ashcroft has announced that the federal government will seek the death penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker from September 11th.

But to what end do we seek to execute Zacarias Moussaoui?

Killing him may quench an understandable thirst for revenge, but I submit it won’t help the families of the victims.

I cannot imagine the particular pain of families who lost loved ones in the ghastly events of September 11th. Nor can I know the grievous loss of those whose family members died in the military actions which inevitably followed.

But since the day the killer shot to death my pregnant sister and her husband, I do know what it is like to get the nightmarish phone call which forever divides life into before and after.

And I do know Bud Welch, whose daughter Julie Marie died in a twisted heap of rubble in the Oklahoma City bombing. Welch, like me a murder victims family member who opposes executions, understands what is it like to wait for the body of a dear one to be excavated from a building used as a weapon for maximum slaughter of innocent civilians. As such, he is one of the few people in the nation who can begin to grasp what the families of September 11 may face if Zacarias Moussaoui is executed.

Bud will tell you that many of the Oklahoma City families didn’t want Timothy McVeigh executed. After his execution, they felt empty and cheated for a number of reasons.

First, killing McVeigh didn’t punish him; it actually gave him what he wanted – a martyr’s death in a blaze of publicity.

Many family members also felt McVeigh’s execution obliterated the opportunity for him to provide information about a wider conspiracy. That may have been speculation in the case of Oklahoma City; it is surely not with respect to the September 11th attacks. If we execute Moussaoui, everything he knows dies with him. Those who could have been held accountable may never be.

Bud Welch and countless others never got to hear McVeigh acknowledge what we victims often need to hear more than anything – to admit and understand the full measure of what he has taken and to express remorse. “He never said he was sorry” was a common complaint. The “closure” families were promised never materialized for many.

Welch says that “what we ended up with on the morning after Tim McVeigh’s execution was nothing more than a huge staged political event driven by the media – it did nothing to help the victims of Oklahoma City that wanted McVeigh to die and have since his death learned that act of violence did nothing to bring them any peace.”

The issue that remains is justice. Is the death penalty the only means of achieving that goal for the September 11th families?

Al life for thousands of lives is not justice. McVeigh’s life for the 168 lives was not enough. A life for even the three lives of my sister, her husband, and their baby is insufficient.

To suggest that taking the killer’s life would somehow make up for what we have lost is an obscenity – the debt is beyond repayment.

An execution cannot be used to condemn killing. Such an act is the mirror image of the criminal’s willingness to use violence against a victim.

Those responsible for the heinous and despicable acts of September 11th owe us more than their deaths; they owe us their lives. Let us not complete what this would-be martyr failed to do.

Let us instead remember the stories of these lost loved ones. Every single day the New York Times  has carefully published these powerful individual stories of loss. We have all learned about the businessman father who played so lovingly with his now fatherless children; the parents who have buried a beloved son; the lost mothers, sisters, daughters. Each life so precious. Their stories are the victory. Their love and lives should be the last word.

Jennifer Bishop is the National Chairman of Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation.