Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, along with two co-conspirators, has entered into plea agreements that will spare them from the death penalty. This means there will be no trial seeking capital punishment for Mohammed and his associates.
The man accused of being the main architect of al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks has agreed to plead guilty, according to the U.S. Defense Department.
News agency PTI reported that the U.S. announced a pre-trial deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti-Pakistani engineer, and two others, Walid Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa al Hawsawi, who are accused of involvement in the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. They have spent almost two decades in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The agreement was reached after 27 months of negotiations.
This deal removes the possibility of a death sentence for the three accused, prosecutors said in a letter to the families of 9/11 victims and survivors, shortly before the Department of Defense made the news public in a press release. According to the letter obtained by CNN, Mohammed and his co-defendants will enter guilty pleas at a hearing that could take place as soon as next week.
The agreements with the Pentagon offer partial closure to a case that has dragged on for years, becoming bogged down in legal delays over whether evidence obtained through torture during their interrogations could be used in court.
On September 11, 2001, two hijacked planes struck the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third hit the Pentagon in Washington, and a fourth, headed for Washington, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back against the hijackers.
Many family members of the nearly 3,000 victims of the September 11 attacks have called for the 9/11 defendants to face the death penalty. However, as a trial became increasingly unlikely, plea bargains were widely viewed as the only way to resolve the case, U.S. media reported.
Susan Escallier, the Convening Authority for Military Commissions, entered into pretrial agreements with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, three of the co-accused in the 9/11 case, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Defense.
“The specific terms and conditions of the pretrial agreements are not available to the public at this time,” the release stated.
The three, along with Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Ramzi Bin al Shibh, were initially charged jointly and arraigned on June 5, 2008, and then again on May 5, 2012, in connection with their alleged roles in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a U.S.-educated engineer, was captured on March 1, 2003, in Pakistan and has been held with other Al Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Prosecutors argued that he proposed the idea of hijacking planes and flying them into U.S. buildings to al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, and later helped recruit and train some of the hijackers.
An official from Amnesty International USA welcomed the pre-trial agreement as “welcome news” that will bring some accountability for the 9/11 attacks and justice for its victims and survivors. Daphne Eviatar, director of the group’s Security with Human Rights program, expressed satisfaction with the outcome for the accused, who were tortured and detained without trial for over two decades. She said the announcement should signal the “beginning of the end” for the military prison.
The Biden administration has been working to close the Guantanamo prison facility quietly. By last year, the number of detainees had decreased to 30 from nearly 800 at its peak, according to NBC News.
