US prosecutors have reached a deal with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Pentagon said Wednesday, that reportedly involves him pleading guilty in exchange for avoiding a death penalty trial.
The agreement with Mohammed and two other defendants brings their long-running cases, which had been tangled in pretrial moves for years while the defendants were detained at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba, closer to resolution.
A Pentagon statement said no details of the deal would be immediately made public, but The New York Times reported that Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy in exchange for life sentences rather than the death penalty after trial.
Such a proposal was detailed in a letter by prosecutors last year, but families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were divided over the proposal, and some still wanted the defendants to receive the ultimate punishment.
Much of the legal wrangling surrounding these men’s cases has centered on whether they could receive a fair trial after suffering systematic torture at the hands of the CIA in the years following 9/11 — a thorny question that could be avoided with plea agreements.
Mohammed was considered one of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s most trusted and intelligent aides before he was captured in Pakistan in March 2003. He spent three years in secret CIA prisons before arriving at Guantanamo in 2006.
The trained engineer – who has said he masterminded the 9/11 attacks “from A to Z” – was involved in a number of major plots against the United States, where he attended university.
In addition to planning the operation to bring down the Twin Towers, Mohammed has claimed to have beheaded American journalist Daniel Pearl with his “right hand” in 2002, and to have assisted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people.
– ‘War on terror’ prison –
Bin Attash, a Yemeni-born Saudi citizen, allegedly trained two of the hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks, and his US interrogators also said he confessed to buying explosives and recruiting members of the team that attacked the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors.
He took refuge in neighbouring Pakistan after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and was captured there in 2003, where he was then held in a network of secret CIA prisons.
Hawsawi is suspected of financing the 9/11 attacks. He was arrested in Pakistan on 1 March 2003 and was also held in secret prisons before being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006.
The United States used an isolated naval base called Guantanamo to detain terrorists captured during the “war on terror” after the September 11 attacks, in an attempt to prevent the defendants from claiming rights under US law.
The facility held 800 prisoners at its peak, but they have since been gradually repatriated to other countries. President Joe Biden promised to try to close Guantanamo before his election, but it remains open.
In another 9/11-related case, the Justice Department rejected a request by the so-called “20th hijacker” Zacarias Mousavi to serve the rest of his life sentence in France.
In a handwritten letter to District Judge Leonie Brinkema obtained by the website Legal Insurrection, Mousavi – the only person convicted in the United States in connection with the September 11 attacks – expressed fears he would be executed if Donald Trump is re-elected president in November.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said the department does not discuss prisoner transfer requests, but noted that Mousavi “is serving a life sentence after being convicted of terrorism offenses.”
“The Department of Justice plans to enforce this life sentence in U.S. custody,” the spokesperson said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
