The United States has entered into a pre-trial agreement with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and two other co-accused individuals. Mohammed, a Kuwaiti-Pakistani engineer, was charged on Saturday, along with Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa al Hawsawi, over the 2001 terror attacks that claimed nearly 3,000 lives.
This deal takes the death penalty off the table for Mohammed, Bin Attash and al Hawsawi after 27 months of negotiations, according to a letter sent to the families of 9/11 victims and survivors. The Department of Defense confirmed the news in a press release Wednesday.
The deal could involve Mohammed and the co-defendants - all of whom have been detained at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for almost two decades - entering guilty pleas as early as next week, CNN reported.
The agreement marks a partial resolution in a case riddled with legal delays over whether evidence obtained using torture is admissible in court.
On September 11, 2001, hijackers crashed two planes into New York City's World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon in Washington. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back against the hijackers.
While many in the families of the victims of the September 11 attacks have called for the defendants to face the death penalty, with a trial increasingly unlikely, as US media has reported, plea deals were seen as the only resolution.
Those deals were approved by the Convening Authority for Military Commissions, Susan Escallier, the Department of Defense said in a press release, as it announced that it had signed off on pretrial agreements with all three detainees. The details of the agreements, though, are not public yet.
In 2008 the first charge-list was drawn up for Mohammed, Bin Attash and al Hawsawi, followed by another in 2012, together with Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Ramzi Bin al Shibh, about the September 11 attacks.
A letter to families said they have until 1 November 2010 to send in questions, which the alleged co-conspirators will respond to by the end of the year.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's parents are from the Pakistani province of Balochistan, not born there. He was arrested on 1 March 2003 in Pakistan. A US-trained engineer, Mohammed was taken into custody at Guantanamo Bay along with other Al Qaeda operatives. Prosecutors maintain he suggested the plan to hijack planes and fly into U.S buildings to Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, and was then involved in recruiting and training the hijackers.
An official with Amnesty International USA hailed the pre-trial agreement as a step toward some accountability for the 9/11 attacks and justice for victims and survivors of the atrocities. Daphne Eviatar of Amnesty International USA welcomed the outcome, stating it was "about time" some of the accused were brought to trial after being detained for over two decades without trial.
Eviatar also added that this should be the "beginning of the end" for Guantanamo Bay. The Biden administration has been trying to shut the prison without much fanfare. As recently as last year, there were 30 detainees, radically down from nearly 800 at the highest count, NBC News reported.
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