Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, indicted as the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, has agreed to plead guilty
WASHINGTON: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of masterminding the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, has agreed to plead guilty, the Defense Department said Wednesday. The development points to a long-delayed resolution to the terror attack that killed thousands and changed the course of the United States and much of the Middle East.
Muhammad and two of his associates, Walid Bin Atash and Mustafa Al-Hawsawi, are expected to make statements to the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as early as next week.
According to letters from the federal government received by relatives of some of the nearly 3,000 people killed on the morning of Sept. 11, lawyers have asked for life in prison in exchange for guilty pleas.
Terri Strada, the head of one group of families of the nearly 3,000 direct victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, recalled the dozens of relatives who died awaiting justice for the killings when she heard the news of the plea agreement.
“They were cowards when they planned the attack,” she said of the defendants. “And today they are cowards.”
Pentagon officials declined to immediately release the full terms of the plea agreements.
The US plea deal with the men comes more than 16 years after they were prosecuted for the al-Qaeda attack. It comes more than 20 years after militants hijacked four commercial airliners to use as rocket fuel and flew them to the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
Al-Qaeda hijackers sent the fourth plane to Washington, but crew members and passengers tried to break into the cockpit and the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
The attack sparked what President George W. Bush's administration called a war on terror, prompting US military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and years of US operations against armed extremist groups in the Middle East.
The US attack and retaliation led to the complete overthrow of two governments, devastated communities and countries caught up in the battle, and played a role in inspiring the 2011 Arab Spring popular uprisings against authoritarian governments in the Middle East.
At home, the attacks inspired a sharply more militaristic and nationalistic turn to American society and culture.
US authorities call Mohammed the source of the idea to use planes as weapons. It is believed that he obtained the consent of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US forces in 2011, to organize the kidnappings and murders of 9/11.
Authorities captured Mohammed in 2003. While he was in CIA custody before arriving at Guantanamo Bay, Mohammed was subjected to 183 tortures and forced interrogations.
The use of torture has become one of the most serious obstacles in US efforts to try people at the Guantanamo military commission because of the inadmissibility of evidence related to abuse. Torture was a major factor in delaying the trial, as was the location of the courtroom a short flight from the US.
Daphne Eviatar, US director of human rights group Amnesty International, said on Wednesday that she welcomed news of some accountability for the attacks.
She urged the Biden administration to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which holds people detained during the so-called war on terror. Since then, many of them have received permission, but are waiting for permission to travel to other countries.
In addition, Eviatar said, “the Biden administration must also take all necessary steps to ensure that a state-sanctioned program of enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment is never again carried out by the United States.”
Strada, president of a national group of families of victims called United Families of 9/11, was in Manhattan federal court for a hearing in one of many civil lawsuits when she heard news of the plea agreement.
Strada said many families simply wanted the men to plead guilty.
“Personally, I wanted to see the court,” she said. “And they just took away the justice that I expected, the trial and the punishment.”
Michael Burke, one of the family members who received the government's plea, decried the long wait for justice and the outcome.
“The Nuremberg trials took months or a year,” said Burke, whose brother, Fire Captain Billy, died in the collapse of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. “It has always been a shame to me that these guys, 23 years later, have not been convicted and punished for either the 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 watched the towers collapse, 'Oh, hey, 23 years later these guys are responsible for this crime that we're witnessing just started getting plea deals so they could avoid death and serve life in prison,” he said.
Burke's brother, New York Fire Department Capt. Billy Burke, ordered his men out but remained on the 27th floor of the North Tower with two men who remained there: a paralyzed patient who was stuck there because the elevators had shut down he has a wheelchair and this man's friend.
