9/11 ‘20th hijacker’ arrested in Minnesota is denied transfer from federal supermax to French prison

The Justice Department has denied a request by Zacarias Moussaoui, the only prisoner ever convicted in the United States of having ties to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to serve the remainder of his life sentence in his native France.

Moussaoui had made the application from the supermax prison in Colorado, using a process that is routinely available to foreign nationals held as U.S. prisoners. Word of it stirred a protest letter by Republican senators last week.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, two relatives of people killed in the attacks said they were notified by the Justice Department that the request was denied. “Our office appreciates your concerns and comments regarding Zacarias Moussaoui,” the email said. “I am notifying you that Mr. Moussaoui’s application to transfer to France was denied by the United States on July 26, 2024.”

No explanation was offered for the delay in notification. On July 25, a dozen senators led by Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida wrote to President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland that “no consideration whatsoever should be given to this convicted terrorist’s preferences for where to serve his sentence.”

They demanded that the United States “swiftly deny his transfer request and force him to spend the remainder of his pathetic life imprisoned in the country he and his fellow terrorists attacked 23 years ago.”

Moussaoui, 56, was arrested in Minnesota a month before the hijackings, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. For a time after Sept. 11, U.S. officials theorized he was the would-be 20th hijacker in the attacks carried out by 19 men, but later dropped that assertion.

In 2005, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill American citizens in a federal court case in Alexandria, Virginia. A jury sentenced him the next year to life imprisonment, rather than the death sentence prosecutors had sought. He is held in solitary confinement at the federal supermax prison in Colorado, with no possibility of release.

An inmate who is denied a transfer “may normally reapply for transfer two years from the date of denial,” according to the federal prison policy. It was not known if Moussaoui had applied previously because the Justice Department declined to discuss the matter, citing department policy.

Nicole Navas Oxman, a Justice Department spokesperson, had, however, suggested the request would not be granted.

“Zacarias Moussaoui is serving a life sentence following conviction for terrorism offenses,” she said. “The Department of Justice plans to enforce this life sentence in U.S. custody.”

The United States has treaties with more than 80 countries, including France, that allow for the transfer of foreign citizens to complete their sentences in prisons in their country of citizenship. The information is routinely available in federal Bureau of Prisons facilities, although most applications are rejected.

Justice Department records show that in 2019, before the coronavirus complicated such activities, 1,275 prisoners applied for such transfers and 347 were transferred. No country breakdown was available.

To be eligible, prisoners must have no pending appeal or capital sentence, and their offense must be recognized as a crime in the receiving country.

The Justice Department then decides whether such a transfer is appropriate. France would also have to consider the matter but has not yet received an official request, Pascal Confavreux, the embassy spokesperson, said this week.

Moussaoui is held in the supermax prison under special administrative measures that limit his communications with the outside world, a key factor that suggested his application might be denied.

In 2014, he filed a request in federal court in Miami seeking transfer to the Pentagon prison at Guantánamo Bay, which holds people captured overseas in the war on terrorism — not federal convicts like Moussaoui.

At that time, the United States was holding Mohamed al-Kahtani at Guantánamo Bay; military prosecutors had described him as an alternative would-be 20th hijacker. A senior Pentagon official with oversight of the process dismissed the case against al-Kahtani because he had been tortured at Guantánamo Bay. He was repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2022 for mental health care.

Five other men held at Guantánamo are charged with plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, including the man who is accused of being the mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. That case has not reached trial.

The United States transfers more prisoners with foreign nationalities than it receives U.S. citizens from other countries, according to the State Department. One goal of the program is to relieve “special hardships that fall upon offenders incarcerated in foreign countries, far from home.”