U.S. authorities announced Wednesday that they have reached an agreement with the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and two other defendants, which according to the press includes a plea of guilty to avoid a trial that carries the death penalty.
The deals with Mohammed and two accomplices bring their cases closer to a resolution after years of being bogged down in pre-trial proceedings while the defendants were held at the US military base in Guantanamo, Cuba.
A Pentagon statement said details of the deal would not be made public at this time, but the New York Times reported that Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa Al Hawsawi agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy in exchange for life in prison rather than a trial where they faced the death penalty.
Prosecutors had outlined the proposal in a letter last year, but the move has divided families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks, with some still wanting the defendants to face the death penalty.
Lieutenant of Osama bin Laden
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 at Guantanamo in 2006.
The engineer, who has claimed to have masterminded the 9/11 attacks “from A to Z,” has been accused of participating in a series of major plots against the United States, where he attended university.
Bin Attash, a Saudi of Yemeni origin, is believed to have trained two of the hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks. He fled to neighbouring Pakistan after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and was captured there in 2003.
Al Hawsawi is suspected of being in charge of financing the 9/11 attacks. Arrested in Pakistan on March 1, 2003, he was also held in secret prisons before being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006.
In another 9/11-related case, the Justice Department denied the request of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20th hijacker,” to serve the remainder of his life sentence in France.
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