The Mastermind of 9/11 Escapes Execution… Plea Deal for Life Imprisonment
Twenty-three years after the 9/11 attacks, the mastermind behind the operation and two of the participants reached a plea deal on Thursday to avoid the death penalty.
On Wednesday, the American newspaper “New York Times” reported, citing unnamed Pentagon officials, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of planning the 9/11 attacks, and two other detainees with him at Guantanamo prison, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges in exchange for life imprisonment.
The newspaper noted that a “senior Pentagon official approved the agreement, which stipulates their guilty plea in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.”
The three men have been detained since 2003. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a member of Al-Qaeda and is accused by the United States of being the main planner of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon on the outskirts of Washington.
The newspaper explained that lead prosecutor Aaron Rugh said in a letter to the families of the 9/11 victims: “In exchange for canceling the possibility of the death penalty, the three defendants agreed to plead guilty to all charges against them, including the killing of 2,976 people as listed in the indictment.”
The newspaper added that the letter mentioned that the three men could submit their guilty plea in a public hearing as early as next week.
The Pentagon issued a statement confirming that “prosecutors reached plea agreements with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, without disclosing the terms of these agreements.”
The three men are accused of terrorism and the murder of nearly three thousand people in the attacks on New York and Washington. These men have never been tried, as the process of bringing them to trial has been delayed by the question of whether the torture they endured in CIA secret prisons had tainted the evidence against them.
In March 2022, the lawyers for the three detainees confirmed that negotiations were underway to reach a deal for a sentence in exchange for a guilty plea, rather than appearing before the military court at Guantanamo.
The defendants particularly wanted to secure a guarantee to remain at Guantanamo rather than be transferred to a federal prison on U.S. soil, where they could be held in solitary confinement.
