Three of the five 9/11 defendants at Guantanamo Bay — including the alleged mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — have reached plea deals with prosecutors, the Defense Department announced Wednesday.
Gary B. Sowards, Mohammed’s lead attorney, confirmed to ABC News Wednesday night that the deal does not include the death penalty but means his client will essentially serve life in prison.
The trial of the five 9/11 conspirators has been tied up in court proceedings for a long time. No details about the specific terms and conditions of the pretrial agreement have been made public by the Defense Department. The two other conspirators who accepted the deal, in addition to Mohammed, are Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.
Patrick White, cousin of Louis Nacke II, who was a passenger on United Flight 93 (the flight where passengers attempted to retake the plane from the hijackers and where, during the struggle, the plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania), told ABC News: “I’ve made peace with that.”
He added that he believed that “life imprisonment and an admission of guilt for complicity in [the] “The murder of loved ones” was what he hoped would result from the plea bargains.
A White House National Security Council spokesperson told ABC News that the White House has learned that the Military Commissions Convening Authority reached pretrial agreements Wednesday with Mohammed and the two other 9/11 defendants.
The spokesperson also said the president and the White House played no role in the process.
Last September, ABC News reported that President Joe Biden had rejected a series of requests intended to form the basis of plea bargains proposed by the five defendants.
Biden accepted Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s recommendation not to accept their demands, known as “common policy principles,” which they sought before entering into plea negotiations with prosecutors. According to the New York Times, those demands included avoiding solitary confinement and receiving medical treatment for injuries the detainees claimed were the result of CIA interrogation methods while in the agency’s “dark prisons.”
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, shortly after his capture on March 1, 2003.
AFP via Getty Images
“The September 11 attacks were the most serious attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor,” a National Security Council spokesperson told ABC News in a statement in September 2023. “The president does not believe that accepting the principles of the Common Policy as the basis for a pretrial agreement would be appropriate under these circumstances. The administration is committed to ensuring that the military commission process is fair and provides justice for victims, survivors, families, and those accused of crimes.”
The five detainees were transferred to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006. Their cases have been tied up in legal proceedings for years, with no trial date set.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, two hijacked planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, marking the beginning of a series of coordinated attacks on the United States by the Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda terrorist group. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day and thousands more were injured.
-ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
