Zacarias Moussaoui Requests Transfer to France, Sparking Outrage

Zacarias Moussaoui Seeks Transfer to France Amidst Controversy

The only individual ever convicted in the United States for having connections to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Zacarias Moussaoui, has made a formal request to serve out his life sentence in his home country of France. This application has ignited a wave of protests among Republican senators, who are voicing their strong opposition.

Moussaoui, aged 56, was apprehended in Minnesota just a month prior to the tragic hijackings that resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 individuals in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Initially, U.S. officials speculated that he could have been the intended 20th hijacker among the 19 perpetrators of the attacks, but this theory was later abandoned.

In 2005, Moussaoui entered a guilty plea for conspiring to kill American citizens in a federal court located in Alexandria, Virginia. The following year, a jury sentenced him to life imprisonment instead of the death penalty that prosecutors had sought. Currently, he is confined in solitary confinement at the federal supermax prison in Colorado, where he faces a life sentence with no possibility of release.

Nicole Navas Oxman, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, refrained from confirming the specifics of Moussaoui’s transfer request, citing departmental policy. However, she indicated that such a request is unlikely to be approved. “Zacarias Moussaoui is serving a life sentence following conviction for terrorism offenses,” she stated. “The Department of Justice plans to enforce this life sentence in U.S. custody.”

Despite this, the department issued a notice on July 10 to the relatives of victims who perished in the attacks, inviting them to submit comments regarding Moussaoui’s request within a 30-day period. This invitation underscores the ongoing sensitivity surrounding the events of September 11 and the implications of such a transfer for the victims’ families.