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Flying Mouss
BY PAUL H.B. SHIN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Convicted 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui took the last flight of his life yesterday - a one-way trip on Con Air.
U.S. marshals escorted Moussaoui from his cell in Virginia to the Supermax federal prison in Colorado, where he will live out the rest of his days in solitary confinement.
"He's not going to be a martyr. He's just going to rot to death now. Maybe that's a better sentence for him," said Bill Doyle, 59, who lost his son, Joseph, 25, when Al Qaeda terrorists crashed hijacked passenger jets into the World Trade Center, where Joseph worked for Cantor Fitzgerald.
Moussaoui, 37, was the sole passenger early yesterday on a small jet operated by the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System, made famous by the 1997 movie "Con Air," starring Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi and John Cusack.
But unlike the action-packed Hollywood sendoff, Moussaoui's red-eye flight went off without a hitch.
Marshals transported prisoner 51427-054 from the detention center in Alexandria, Va., and arrived in the predawn darkness at the most secure prison in America, in Florence, Colo., 90 miles southwest of Denver.
"He has now begun serving his sentence of life without the possibility of release," the U.S. Marshals Service said.
The $60 million Supermax, officially called Administrative Maximum, was built in 1995 to lock up "the nation's most violent, disruptive and escape-prone inmates," according to the Bureau of Prisons.
It is home to 398 notorious inmates, including Ramzi Yousef, who planned the 1993 Trade Center bombing; Eric Rudolph, the bomber of Atlanta's Olympic park; Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Terry Nichols, accomplice in the Oklahoma City bombing, and foiled shoe-bomber Richard Reid.
But Moussaoui will have little contact with his infamous fellow cons.
The 7-by-12-foot soundproof cells were designed so inmates cannot make eye contact with each other. Moussaoui will be in solitary confinement for all but one hour a day to eat or exercise.
Each cell contains a concrete stool, shower and toilet. And he will sleep on a concrete bed topped with a mattress.
Family members of the victims of 9/11 said the harsh habitat is a fitting end for Moussaoui.
"He justly deserves it," said Vincent Ragusa, 64, who lost his 29-year-old firefighter son, Michael, at Ground Zero.
"I'm kind of glad he didn't get the death sentence because he will now have the rest of his life to think about what his cadre of cohorts did to this country," Ragusa said. "It's kind of poetic justice. He won't have the 72 virgins to greet him at the door."
"I don't shed too many tears for Mr. Moussaoui," he added.
Moussaoui pleaded guilty in April 2005 to six counts of conspiring with Al Qaeda to carry out the 9/11 attacks.
His transfer got underway late Friday - the same day his court-appointed lawyers appealed his life sentence, handed down earlier this month in a federal court in Virginia.
