PARIS —  The mother of Zacarias Moussaoui said Tuesday "my life is hell" as she left France for the United States to be present when a federal jury decides the fate of her son.

Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent, is the only person charged in the United States in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The jury is deliberating whether he should be sentenced to death or receive life in prison.

"This has been going on for four years, but now my life is hell. It's hell and that's all," his mother, Aicha El Wafi, told AP Television News at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport.

"I feel too much pain to speak," she said before boarding a flight to Washington.

The federal jury in Alexandria, Va., deliberated for three hours Monday after hearing closing arguments in the six-week trial. Deliberations were to resume Tuesday.

Moussaoui was in a U.S. jail on Sept. 11, 2001. But the jury ruled that lies he told federal agents when he was arrested in August 2001 on immigration violations allowed the plot to go forward.