WASHINGTON — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of masterminding al-Qaeda terror attacks September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, has agreed to plead guilty, the Defense Department said Wednesday. The development signals a long-delayed resolution to an attack that killed thousands and changed the course of the United States and much of the Middle East.
Mohammed and two accomplices, Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, are expected to submit their pleas to the military commission in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, next week.
Defense attorneys have asked for life sentences in exchange for their guilty pleas, according to federal letters received by families of the nearly 3,000 people killed the morning of September 11.
Terry Strada, head of a group representing the families of the nearly 3,000 direct victims of the September 11 attacks, referred to the dozens of family members who have died while awaiting justice for the killings when she heard about the settlement.
“They were cowards when they planned the attack,” she said of the suspects. “And they remain cowards today.”
Pentagon officials declined to immediately disclose the full terms of the settlement.
The U.S. agreement with the men comes more than 16 years after their prosecution for the al-Qaeda attack began. It comes more than 20 years after militants seized four commercial airliners to use as rocket fuel, flying them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
Al-Qaeda hijackers sent a fourth plane to Washington, but crew and passengers tried to storm the cockpit, causing the plane to crash in a Pennsylvania field.
The attack launched what President George W. Bush called the war on terror, which led to U.S. military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and years of U.S. operations against armed extremist groups elsewhere in the Middle East.
The attack and US retaliation toppled two governments, devastated communities and countries caught up in the fighting, and played a role in inspiring the 2011 Arab Spring, a popular uprising against authoritarian governments in the Middle East.
At home, the attacks led to a much more militaristic and nationalistic turn in the struggle. American society and culture.
US authorities have pointed to Mohammed as the source of the idea to use aircraft as weapons. He reportedly received approval from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US forces in 2011, to organize the 9/11 hijackings and assassinations.
Authorities arrested Mohammed in 2003. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times during his CIA custody before being placed in Guantanamo, and was subjected to other forms of torture and oppression.
The The use of torture has proven to be one of the biggest obstacles in US efforts to try the men in the military commission at Guantanamo because of the inadmissibility of evidence related to ill-treatment. Torture is responsible for much of the delay in the proceedings, as well as the fact that the courtroom is a plane ride away from the United States.
Daphne Eviatar, executive director of the human rights group Amnesty International USA, said on Wednesday she welcomed news of some accountability for the attacks.
She urged the Biden administration to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which holds people captured in the so-called war on terror. Many have been exonerated but are awaiting approval to leave for other countries.
In addition, Eviatar said, “The Biden administration must also take all necessary measures to ensure that a program of state-sanctioned enforced disappearances, torture, and other forms of abuse will never again be carried out by the United States.”
Strada, national chair of 9/11 Families United, a group of victims’ families, was in federal court in Manhattan for a hearing on one of the many civil lawsuits when she heard news of the settlement.
According to Strada, many families just wanted the men to admit their guilt.
“For me personally, I wanted to see a trial,” she said. “And they just took away the justice that I expected, a trial and the punishment.”
Michael Burke, one of the family members notified of the settlement by the government, condemned the long wait for justice and the outcome.
“The Nuremberg trials took months or a year,” said Burke, whose brother Billy, a fire chief, died in the collapse of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. “I always find it outrageous that these guys, 23 years later, still haven’t been convicted and punished for their attacks or the crime. I never understood how it took so long.”
“I think people would be shocked if you could go back in time and say to the people who just saw the towers fall, ‘Oh, hey, 23 years from now, these guys who are responsible for the crime that we just saw are going to get a plea deal so they can avoid the death penalty and get life in prison,’” he said.
Burke’s brother, New York City Fire Chief Billy Burke, ordered his men to leave, but remained on the 27th floor of the North Tower with two men who had remained behind: a quadriplegic who, because the elevators were not working, was effectively confined to his wheelchair, and the man’s friend.
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Neumeister and Sisak reported from New York.
