Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted and is serving a life sentence in the federal SuperMax facility in Colorado for being part of the 9/11 airliner hijacking operation that killed more than 3,000 citizens and destroyed the World Trade Center towers in New York.
You can read his indictment here.
A quick recap of his part in the terrorist mayhem from the Associated Press:
Zacarias Moussaoui remains the only person ever convicted in a U.S. court in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks….Moussaoui was arrested in August 2001, before the attacks, when his efforts to obtain advanced flight training drew suspicion. He was charged [that] December as being a member of the al-Qaida conspiracy that carried out the attacks that killed 3,000 people….Moussaoui actually pleaded guilty to the charges against him, so the 2006 trial was simply to determine whether his sentence would be life in prison or death. In the first phase of the trial, prosecutors had to prove that Moussaoui’s role in the conspiracy led to the deaths of Sept. 11 victims, making him eligible for the death penalty.Once he was determined to be eligible, the jury then considered whether he deserved the death penalty.The jury found him eligible for execution, but one of 12 jurors voted for life in prison rather than execution. That was enough to keep Moussaoui off death row; he’s serving a life sentence in Colorado.
Recently, we received a tip from a reader who lost a family member on 9/11 that Moussaoui had requested a transfer to France, and the reader was concerned that once there he may be released by the French. The reader pointed out that there was zero press coverage.
A little digging reveals that our reader was correct: there is literally not one news story regarding this anywhere in any media we could find despite it being a huge story.
And a little more digging into Moussaoui’s criminal court docket reveals the reason for Moussaoui’s request for transfer to France; namely, he is deathly afraid that should Donald Trump win the Presidential election in November, he will order Moussaoui’s immediate execution.
Moussaoui’s handwritten letter to the court, which you can review here, is set forth in its entirety at the end of this post, but here is the money part of the reasoning:
You Honor, as presinding [sic] and sentencing judge your Court sentenced me at life without parole.Instead your Honor might concur that there is a possibility if not a probability that if the Ex US President Donald Trump was to be reelected He will sentence me to death by presidential executive order.
A note: as a former U.S. District Court clerk I handled hundreds of handwritten letters to the court from inmates requesting everything from resentencing to some kind of prison amenity and everything in-between, so the fact that the letter is hand-written is not surprising since federal and state inmates rarely have access to computers. Moussaoui continues:
Indeed, I was warn by attorney Charles Freeman and Professor Reza that US law permit the US President to sentence to death any federal prisonneer [sic] deem to be a threat to National security.
Moussaoui then explains that during certain court proceedings he was called a national security threat, which makes him worried that Trump might use that to order his execution. He summarizes and makes his request:
In the meantime there is the real prospect that the Ex President is reelected and therefore…I want to apply to this Court and the US government to be transfer to France to finish my sentence…I could be transfer to France to serve the rest of my life sentence and before the potential inauguration of Ex President Trump…May your Honor and your Court enter an order as soon as your Court find it appropriate and grant me my…request. Zacarias Moussaoui, 05/13/2024.
The court docket does not indicate any action taken by the Judge on this request.
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