WASHINGTON — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of masterminding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qaida on the United States, has agreed to plead guilty, the Defense Department announced Wednesday, underscoring a long-awaited resolution to the attack that killed thousands and changed the course of events in the United States and much of the Middle East.
Mohammed and two accomplices, Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, are expected to appear before the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as early as next week.
Defense attorneys asked that the men be sentenced to life in prison in exchange for their guilty pleas, according to letters from the federal government received by relatives of some of the nearly 3,000 people killed instantly on the morning of Sept. 11.
Terry Strada, who leads a group of families of the nearly 3,000 direct victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, spoke of the dozens of loved ones who died waiting for justice for those killings when she heard news of the plea deal.
“They were cowards when they planned the attack,” she said of the defendants. “And they are still cowards today.”
Pentagon officials declined to immediately release the full terms of the plea deals.
The U.S. deal with the men comes more than 16 years after the al-Qaeda attack began and more than 20 years after militants hijacked four commercial airliners and used them as fuel-filled missiles, launching them into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Al-Qaeda hijackers flew a fourth plane toward Washington, but crew members and passengers attempted to storm the cockpit and the plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
The attack launched what the administration of President George W. Bush called its war on terror, setting off the 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 the U.S. retaliation toppled two governments, devastated communities and countries caught in the battle, and helped inspire the popular uprisings of the 2011 Arab Spring against authoritarian governments across the Middle East.
In the United States, the attacks inspired a markedly more militaristic and nationalistic turn in American society and culture.
U.S. officials have named Mohammed as the originator of the idea to use planes as weapons. He reportedly received approval from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed by U.S. forces in 2011, to organize the Sept. 11 hijackings and killings.
Authorities captured Mohammed in 2003. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times while in CIA custody before being sent to Guantanamo, and was subjected to other forms of torture and coercive interrogation.
The use of torture has proven to be one of the most formidable obstacles to the United States’ efforts to try the men in the Guantanamo military commission, because evidence of abuse is inadmissible. Torture is largely responsible for the delay in the proceedings, as is the fact that the tribunal is located just a plane ride away from the United States.
Daphne Eviatar, director of the human rights organization Amnesty International USA, said Wednesday that she welcomed the news that some accountability for the attacks was being established.
She urged the Biden administration to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which holds people arrested in the so-called war on terror. Many have since been released but are awaiting permission to travel to other countries.
Additionally, 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 perpetrated by the United States.”
Strada, 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 lawsuits when she heard news of the plea deal.
Strada said many families simply want to see the men admit their guilt.
“I personally wanted to see a trial,” she said. “And they just took away the justice I was waiting for, a trial and punishment.”
Michael Burke, one of the family members who received notice from the government about the plea deal, condemned the long wait for justice and its outcome.
“It took months, maybe a year, for the Nuremberg trials,” said Burke, whose brother Billy, a fire captain, died in the collapse of the World Trade Center’s north tower. “It’s always been shameful to me that these guys, 23 years later, haven’t been convicted and punished for their attacks or their 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 collapse, ‘Oh, hey, in 23 years, these guys who are responsible for this crime that we just witnessed are going to get plea deals so they can 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 had remained behind: a quadriplegic who, because the elevators were broken, was essentially stuck there in his wheelchair, and the man’s friend.
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