Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused as the main planner of the 9/11 attacks, agrees to plead guilty
WASHINGTON: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused as the mastermind behind al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 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 attack that killed thousands and changed much of the United States and the Middle East.
Mohammed and two associates, Walid bin Atash and Mustafa al-Hawasawi, are expected to file a petition with the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as early as next week.
According to letters received by the federal government from relatives of nearly 3,000 people killed on the morning of Sept. 11, defense attorneys have requested that the men be sentenced to life in prison in exchange for guilty pleas.
Terry Strada, head of a group of families of nearly 3,000 direct victims of the 9/11 attacks, called on dozens of relatives of those who died awaiting trial for the killings after hearing the news of the plea deal.
“They were cowards when they planned the attack,” she said of the defendants. “And they are cowards today.”
Pentagon officials declined to immediately release the full terms of the plea agreement.
The deal with the US comes 16 years after al-Qaeda began prosecuting them for the attacks. It comes more than 20 years after terrorists commandeered four commercial airliners to use them as fuel-laden missiles, flying them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in New York.
Al-Qaeda hijackers led a fourth plane to Washington, but crew members and passengers attempted to storm the cockpit and the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
This attack caused President George W. Bush's administration instigated the so-called War on Terror, which promoted U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. operations against armed extremist groups elsewhere in the Middle East.
The attack and US retaliation brought the two governments outright, devastated communities and war-torn countries, and played a role in inspiring the 2011 Arab Spring popular uprisings against authoritarian Middle Eastern governments.
At home, the attacks prompted an increasingly militaristic and nationalist turn in American society and culture.
American officials pointed to Mohammed as the source of the idea to use the planes as weapons. He received approval from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US forces in 2011, in what became the 9/11 hijackings and assassinations.
Authorities captured Mohammed in 2003. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times while in CIA custody before his arrival at Guantanamo, and was subjected to other forms of torture and forced interrogation.
The use of torture has proven one of the biggest obstacles to US efforts to try the men at the military commission at Guantánamo, due to the inadmissibility of evidence related to the abuse. Torture is responsible for many delays in proceedings, as well as the location of the court being flown away from the United States.
Daphne Aviator, director of the rights group Amnesty International USA, said Wednesday that she welcomed news of some accountability in the attack.
She urged the Biden administration to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which houses people detained in the so-called war on terrorism. Many have been turned away, but are awaiting approval to go to other countries.
In addition, Aviator said, “The Biden administration must also take all necessary measures to ensure that the United States never repeats a program of state-sanctioned enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment.”
Strada, the national president of a group of victims' families called 9/11 Families United, was in Manhattan federal court for a hearing in one of several civil cases when she heard the news of the plea deal.
Strada said many families would like to see the men confess to the crime.
“For me personally, I would like to see a trial,” she said. “And they just took away the justice I expected, a trial and punishment.”
Michael Burke, one of the family members who received government notice of the plea bargain, decried the long wait for justice and the outcome.
“It took months or a year for the Nuremberg trials,” said Burke, whose fire captain brother Billy died in the collapse of the World Trade Center's North Tower. “For me, it's always outrageous that these guys, 23 years later, haven't been convicted and punished for their assault or crime. I don't understand how it's taken so long.”
“I think if you could go back in time and tell people who watched the towers come down, people would be shocked, 'Oh, hey, in 23 years, these guys are going to be responsible for this crime that we just saw. Get plea deals to avoid death and life in prison. Doing,” he said.
Burke's brother, New York City Fire Captain Billy Burke, ordered his men out but stayed on the 27th floor of the North Tower with two men who stayed behind: a quadriplegic who, because the elevators were out, was essentially stuck there. His wheelchair and the man's friend.
