US reaches plea deals with 9/11 planners at Guantanamo

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi all reached a plea agreement with Washington, the Defense Department announced Wednesday.

The Pentagon would not comment on any further details of the plea agreement. The New York Times reports the three will receive life sentences, and the possibility of the death penalty is now off the table.

The three accused prisoners were all charged jointly in 2008 and again in 2012 in connection to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the US, which killed nearly 3,000 people after the terrorist group al Qaeda hijacked two planes and crashed them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Along with the three prisoners who reached the plea deal, two others were similarly charged in connection to the 9/11 attacks: Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Ramzi Bin al-Shibh.

The families of those killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks are likely to push back against the plea deal, which they have said in the past allows the prisoners to avoid a trial.

The US launched a war on terrorism after the al Qaeda attacks, invading both Iraq and Afghanistan. American forces killed al Qaeda leader and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in 2011.

The three accused 9/11 plotters have been held since 2003, stuck in pretrial litigation. Mohammed, sometimes known as KSM, is accused of being the chief mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

He was subjected to torture during his early detention at Guantanamo Bay, including waterboarding, human rights groups have said. The US has been accused of carrying out acts of torture and abuse against prisoners at the facility.

Mohammed, a Pakistani national, is also accused of being behind at least 30 terrorist attacks or plots.

The plea deal may allow the US to incarcerate the prisoners and move them out of Guantanamo Bay.

The Joe Biden administration has been seeking to wind down operations at Guantanamo Bay, a facility located in a coastal port the US leases from Cuba. The US has been accused of carrying out acts of torture and abuse against prisoners at the facility.

The US last transferred a prisoner from Guantanamo Bay in April 2023, leaving around 30 prisoners at the facility. The US once held 780 prisoners at the site.

In a similar case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) denied a request by Zacarias Moussaoui to serve the remainder of his life sentence in France, the Times reported Wednesday.

Two relatives of people killed in the 9/11 attacks told the Times that the DOJ said it had denied Moussaoui’s request last Friday. No explanation was provided for the several days delay in notification, even after senators wrote to the Biden administration demanding that Moussaoui’s request be rejected last week.

Moussaoui is serving a life sentence from the supermax prison in Colorado. He was arrested in Minnesota a month before the attacks, and for some time after 9/11, it was believed that he would have been the 20th hijacker, but the assertion was later dropped.