9/11 Suspects Reach Plea Deals at Guantánamo

Three men accused of being involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack – including the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon – have agreed to plea deals at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prosecutors said .

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“The Convening Authority for Military Commissions, Susan Escallier, has entered into pre-trial 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,” the Pentagon said in a short statement.

Defense lawyers have requested that the men receive life sentences in exchange for the guilty pleas, according to letters from the federal government received by relatives of some of the nearly 3,000 people killed on the morning of 11 September 2001.

“In exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment, these three accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet,” said the letters, the New York Times reported.

Pentagon officials declined to immediately release the full terms of the plea bargains.

The agreement comes more than 16 years after their prosecution for the attack began, and more than 20 years after Al-Qaida militants commandeered four commercial airliners to use as fuel-filled missiles, flying them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

The deal avoids both the prospect of a lengthy and complex trial, and the possibility that confessions seen as crucial to the case would be thrown out.

The men have been in US custody since 2003, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is widely seen as the chief plotter of the terror attacks. He allegedly received approval from the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US forces in 2011, to craft what became the hijackings and killings.