US prosecutors have reached a deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. The Pentagon announced Wednesday that the agreement reportedly involves a guilty plea in exchange for avoiding a death penalty trial. This agreement, along with similar deals reached with two other accused individuals, moves their long-running cases towards resolution. These cases have been bogged down in pre-trial maneuvering for years while the defendants remained held at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba.
While no details of the deal have been publicly released, The New York Times reported that Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, and Walid bin Attash agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy. This plea would grant them a life sentence instead of a trial that could potentially lead to the death penalty. Prosecutors detailed a similar proposal in a letter last year, but it divided the families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. Some families still desired the defendants to face the ultimate penalty.
Much of the legal jousting surrounding the men’s cases centered around whether they could receive a fair trial. This question arose due to the methodical torture they underwent at the hands of the CIA in the years following 9/11. The plea deals help to circumvent this thorny issue.
Mohammed was considered one of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s most trusted and intelligent lieutenants before his capture in Pakistan in March 2003. He then spent three years in secret CIA prisons before arriving in Guantanamo in 2006. The trained engineer – who has confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attacks “from A to Z” – was involved in a string of major plots against the United States. He had attended university in the US before his involvement in these attacks. In addition to planning the operation to bring down the Twin Towers, Mohammed claims to have personally beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 and to have helped in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people.
Bin Attash, a Saudi of Yemeni origin, allegedly trained two of the hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks. US interrogators also reported that he confessed to buying the explosives and recruiting members of the team that killed 17 sailors in an attack on the USS Cole. He took refuge in neighboring Pakistan after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and was captured there in 2003. He was then held in a network of secret CIA prisons.
Hawsawi is suspected of managing the finances for the 9/11 attacks. He was arrested in Pakistan on March 1, 2003, and was also held in secret prisons before being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006.
The United States used Guantanamo, an isolated naval base, to hold militants captured during the “War on Terror” that followed the September 11 attacks. The facility held 800 prisoners at its peak, but they have since slowly been repatriated to other countries. President Joe Biden pledged before his election to try and shut down Guantanamo, but it remains open.
In another 9/11-related case, the Justice Department denied a request by Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20th hijacker,” to serve the remainder of his life sentence in France. In a hand-written letter to District Judge Leonie Brinkema obtained by the website Legal Insurrection, Moussaoui – the only person convicted in the United States in connection with the September 11 attacks – expressed fears he would be executed if Donald Trump regains the presidency in November. A Justice Department spokeswoman said the department does not discuss prisoner transfer requests but noted that Moussaoui is “serving a life sentence following conviction for terrorism offenses.” “The Department of Justice plans to enforce this life sentence in US custody,” the spokeswoman added.
