Accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed agrees to plead guilty to al-Qaeda attack

Mohammed and two co-defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, are expected to plead guilty at the military commission in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as early as next week.

According to letters from federal authorities received by relatives of some of the nearly 3,000 people killed on the morning of September 11, defense attorneys asked that the men receive life sentences in exchange for pleading guilty.

Terry Strada, who leads a group of families of nearly 3,000 direct victims of the 9/11 attacks, recalled the many relatives who died while waiting for justice for the killings when she heard about the plea deal.

“They were cowards when they planned the attack,” she said of the defendants. “And they remain cowards today.”

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

The US deal with the men comes more than 16 years after they were first indicted for the al-Qaeda attacks. It comes more than 20 years after militants hijacked four commercial airliners to use as fuel-filled missiles, flying three of them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

Al-Qaeda hijackers flew the fourth plane to Washington. But crew members and passengers tried to storm the cockpit, and the plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

The attack sparked what President George W. Bush’s administration called the war on terror, prompting U.S. military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and years of operations against armed extremist groups elsewhere in the Middle East.

The attack and US retaliation completely toppled two governments, devastated communities and countries caught up in the fighting, and served as inspiration for the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings against authoritarian governments across the Middle East.

Domestically, the attacks inspired a more assertive turn toward militarism and nationalism. American Society and Culture.

The US government points to Mohammed as the source of the idea of ​​using airplanes as weapons. He is believed to have received approval from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to carry out what would become the 9/11 hijackings and killings. US forces killed bin Laden in 2011.

The government arrested Mohammed in 2003. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times while in CIA custody before being sent to Guantanamo, along with many other forms of torture and forced interrogation.

The The use of torture has proven to be one of the most formidable obstacles in the United States’ efforts to try the men on military commission at Guantanamo, because evidence regarding abuse was inadmissible. Torture Much of the delay in the proceedings was caused by the courtroom’s location, which was a flight away from the United States.

Daphne Eviatar, US director of human rights group Amnesty International, said on Wednesday that she welcomed news of partial accountability for the attacks.

She urged the Biden administration to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which holds detainees in the so-called war on terror. Many have been released but are awaiting approval to leave for other countries.

Additionally, Eviatar said, “the Biden administration must also take all necessary steps to ensure that the program of enforced disappearances, torture, and other state-sanctioned abuses will never again be carried out by the United States.”

Strada, the national president of a group of victims’ families called Families United, was in Manhattan federal court for a hearing in one of several civil lawsuits when she heard about the plea deal.

Strada said many families just want to see the men admit guilt.

“For me personally, I wanted to see a trial,” she said. “And they took away the justice that I expected, a trial and punishment.”

Michael Burke, one of the family members who received notice from the government about the plea deal, condemned the long wait for justice and its outcome.

“It took months or a year at the Nuremberg trials,” said Burke, whose brother, fire captain Billy, died in the collapse of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. “To me, it’s a shame that these people, 23 years later, have not been convicted and punished for their attacks or their crimes. I’ve never understood why it took so long.”

“I think people would be shocked if you could go back in time and say to those people who just witnessed the towers collapse, ‘Oh, hey, 23 years from now, the people responsible for the crime we just witnessed will plead guilty so they can avoid the death penalty and go to prison for life,’” he said.

Burke’s brother, New York City Fire Chief Billy Burke, ordered his men out but remained on the 27th floor of the North Tower with two men: a quadriplegic who, because the elevators were out of service, was essentially stuck there in a wheelchair, and that man’s friend.