From conservative US commentators who bemoan the fact that Moussaoui will not be ritually sacrificed as a method of holding someone to final account. From liberal European commentators who found themselves suddenly forced to dust off paeans to the American justice system, the elemental decency of 12 ordinary Americans acting without fear or favour and perhaps reflecting a trend in public opinion away from the death penalty. And quite probably from some quarters in the Arab world, for at least a few minutes until the local propagandists could bend the news to their own ends.

Moussaoui will spend the rest of his life in a 'supermax' detention centre in Colorado surrounded by poured concrete and a little window on the outside world, which for him will now consist of the corridor near his cell. This despite often ham-handed efforts by federal prosecutors under tremendous pressure to secure not just a conviction but a death penalty recommendation from the jury, and the sure knowledge that the gut level of public opinion in the American heartland held that death was, if anything, too light a punishment for someone with a provable connection to that day.

The consequences of the Moussaoui case are hard to predict, but one thing that seems certain is that there will be an irresistible pull to begin moving terror suspects being held in Guantanamo Bay to trial. The Bush administration has resisted this for what it thinks are very good reasons . . .

the procedural tactics employed by Moussaoui's lawyers, for one, enabled the trial to be delayed by two years;

observers expect that each of the Guantanamo detainees who stand trial will employ ever-more sophisticated timewasting tactics that will put a strain on the system. Whether they are tried in a military or civilian context, the standards of evidence to 'prove' criminal culpability, rather than the judgement that an individual represents a clear and present danger to innocent lives and therefore a threat that must be countered in time of war, will wind up applying. The delays will become so extreme that one or more of them, like Slobodan Milosevic awaiting trial at the Hague, might actually expire in custody awaiting or during trial.

I've previously argued that the costs of keeping the Guantanamo detainees in Cuba without trial have surpassed the benefits . . . in terms of the international reputation of the US among its allies and friends if nothing else. Add to that any terror suspects that have been 'rendered' by the CIA to 'secret' jails. The only way to remedy that and regain the respect of our necessary allies in the democratic world is to go forward with trials. Lots of them.

As quickly as possible.

For one thing, the mercy shown Moussaoui has opened a brief window of opportunity to keep attention focused on the lives of people who choose to engage in Islamofascist terrorism. We journalists are hooked on narrative, as is only right. In each case, questions will be asked and answered about what happened in the life of each individual held to radicalise them to this point.

The questions then start to become more awkward. Not for the United States . . . which at the moment is on the receiving end of all those questions . . .

but for cultures in the Middle East. And, lest we forget, Europe.

One of the reasons the jury in the Moussaoui case decided to admit a mitigating factor in recommending against a death sentence was the defendant's upbringing. Sneer at the psychobabble about a troubled childhood? Perhaps.

But Moussaoui's childhood is instructive. His upbringing was not in Riyadh or Gaza but in France. Time spent as the child of Moroccan immigrants in French orphanages, and French society, gave him the sense of alienation and eventually hate that made him think it was a good idea to fly planes into buildings filled with American civilians.

How many of the Guantanamo and 'rendered' suspects were so affected? Not by American foreign policy, or even the brutality of Middle Eastern regimes, but by the failure of Europe to find a way to allow immigrants to become Europeans? I'd like to find out.

And then people on this side of the Atlantic might have some awkward questions to answer, for a change.