9/11’s ’20th Hijacker’ Wants Transfer to Gitmo

Zacarias Moussaoui, also known as the “20th hijacker” in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, asked a South Florida federal judge Wednesday for a transfer to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Associated Press reported. 

Moussaoui is serving a life sentence since pleading guilty in 2005 to conspiring with the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. His request to be transferred was made in two letters, filed in a Miami federal court, that, according to the AP, were “rambling.” He signed one of them as the “so-call 20th hijacker” and a “Slave to Allah.”

Five Guantanamo detainees are currently awaiting trial to stand before a military commission in relation to the September 11 attacks. One such detainee is alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and alleged plotter of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri. 

The 46-year-old Moussaoui has been writing letters to various courts all over the country from his maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado.

He claims he has unique knowledge about al-Qaida and the 9/11 attack and wants a chance to testify in lawsuits filed by victims of terrorism. The letters sent to Miami say he wants to go to Guantanamo, because he is being assaulted and harassed by other inmates and guards at his current prison in Colorado. He includes Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as one of his harassers. 

In fact, the AP reports, he says there was a prison plot to murder him and “claim that I committed suicide,” but that failed. “So no suicide, Victory by Allah,” Moussaoui wrote. 

Moussaoui also wants further medical attention and new counsel. He asked Senior U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King to tell prison physicians to perform a hernia operation on him that he says has been long-needed as well as appoint civil rights attorneys Benjamin Crump and Anthony Gray to represent him. Crump and Gray represented the family of Michael Brown following the fatal police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri recently.

“I am currently on a hunger strike in order to have a lawyer since 11/09/14,” Moussaoui wrote.

Authorities placed Moussaoui in custody on immigration charges on 9/11. He was arrested after employees at a Minnesota flight school learned he wanted to fly a Boeing 747 without a pilot’s license.  Moussaoui claimed, during his court case, he planned to fly a plane into the White House on September 11.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.