Prosecutors choosing Sept. 11 survivors who will testify

NEW YORK -- Barbara Minervino has just 40 minutes to describe the lifetime's worth of grief she suffered when her husband was killed in the World Trade Center attack.

This week, she will be among the first people interviewed as prosecutors begin choosing 30 victims' relatives who would testify during the penalty phase if Zacarias Moussaoui is convicted of conspiracy in the Sept. 11 attacks on the Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said Sunday that he would decide by the end of the week whether to seek the death penalty.

"I don't think a lifetime is enough time to say what it has done to us," said Minervino, who has two adult daughters. "We have been robbed of the kindest, gentlest man in our lives. We have been robbed of the glue that holds the family together."

Justice Department officials and FBI agents plan to interview families in 40-minute blocks in New York City, Boston and Arlington, Va., starting today.

The relatives are being scheduled according to where their loved ones worked, with relatives of people who worked at financial companies in the World Trade Center the first in line.

Minervino, whose husband, Louis, was an executive for the financial services firm Marsh & McLennan Co., planned to take photographs of her husband along to the interview. She and her daughters expect it to be emotional.

Families of firefighters and police officers are scheduled for interviews Tuesday. Relatives of employees of bond brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald -- which lost 658 of its nearly 1,000 employees in the World Trade Center -- are to be interviewed on Wednesday. Others, including relatives of people who had been attending a breakfast conference at the Windows on the World restaurant atop one of the trade center towers, are set for Thursday.

Jury selection for Moussaoui's trial is to start Sept. 30 in Alexandria, Va. There has been no estimate of how long the trial will last.

Moussaoui, 33, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, is accused of being an accomplice in the attacks -- a role he denies.

He is charged with six counts of conspiracy -- including four counts that could carry the death penalty.

On the day of the terrorist attacks, Moussaoui was in a prison cell. He had been arrested in Minnesota in August on visa violations.