US prosecutors have come to an agreement with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, as announced by the Pentagon on Wednesday. This arrangement reportedly includes a guilty plea that would allow him to avoid a trial that could result in the death penalty.
The agreements reached with Mohammed and two other co-defendants advance their protracted legal proceedings toward a conclusion. These cases have been mired in pre-trial complexities for several years, with the defendants held at the Guantanamo Bay military facility in Cuba. According to a statement from the Pentagon, specific details of the agreement will not be disclosed at this time. However, the New York Times has reported that Mohammed, along with Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, has consented to plead guilty to conspiracy in exchange for a life sentence, thereby circumventing a trial that could lead to capital punishment.
This proposal was outlined by prosecutors in a letter last year, but it has elicited mixed reactions from the families of the nearly 3,000 victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, with some advocating for the defendants to face the death penalty. Much of the legal debate surrounding these cases has revolved around the fairness of a trial, given that the defendants were subjected to systematic torture by the CIA in the aftermath of 9/11—a complex issue that the plea agreements help to sidestep.
Mohammed is considered one of the most trusted and astute associates of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, having been captured in Pakistan in March 2003. He spent three years in clandestine CIA detention before being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006. The trained engineer has claimed responsibility for orchestrating the 9/11 attacks “from A to Z” and has been linked to several significant plots against the United States, where he had previously studied.
In addition to orchestrating the attacks that led to the collapse of the Twin Towers, Mohammed has asserted that he personally executed US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 and was involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which resulted in six fatalities.
