Moussaoui was removed from a detention center in Alexandria, Virginia late on Friday and flown to Colorado on a small jet commonly referred to as "Con Air," the service said in a brief statement. He arrived at the so-called "Supermax" prison before dawn on Saturday.
Moussaoui will be held at the top-security prison in Florence, Colorado for the rest of his life. "He has now begun serving his sentence of life without the possibility of release," the statement said.
Supermax inmates are housed in two-meter-by-3.5-meter (seven-foot-by-12-foot) individual cells equipped with a concrete bed, stool and desk, as well as a toilet and a shower. They are allowed only one hour of physical exercise outside their cell each day but remain in chains and isolated during that period of time.
The prison, located in the desert about 145 kilometers (90 miles) south of Denver, houses about 400 of the most dangerous criminals in the United States, including Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, 1993 World Trade Center bombing planners Omar Abdel Rahman and Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, British "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph.
The transfer came after Moussaoui, in a surprise move, appealed his life sentence, handed down last week. The 37-year-old Frenchman, who was spared from execution by a jury, is also appealing a judge's refusal to let him change his guilty plea on six conspiracy charges.
The latest appeal of the only person ever tried in the United States over the 2001 attacks was made before the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia. Earlier this week, Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over his trial at a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington, rejected his attempt to change his plea.
Moussaoui recently denied he had any role in the attacks' planning and said he had a change of heart because he had decided he could now get a fair trial in the United States.
Nearly 3,000 people died in the suicide plane attacks against New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, and Moussaoui, who was arrested a month earlier, last year admitted that he had been planning to fly hijacked planes into US buildings.
In the sentencing trial, the 12-person jury had a choice between recommending the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The jury's foreman, a female math teacher, told the Washington Post that a single juror spared Moussaoui the death penalty. The foreman said the jury voted 11-1, 10-2 and 10-2 in favor of the death penalty on three terrorism charges.
A unanimous decision was needed in at least one of the charges for the death sentence, and that left the jury with only the life imprisonment option. The jurors spent 41 hours inside a small room in the Alexandria courthouse before reaching their decision.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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