The White House said Thursday that President Biden “played no role” in the plea process for three of the masterminds of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“The White House learned yesterday that the Military Commissions Convening Authority has entered into pretrial agreements, negotiated by military prosecutors, with KSM and other 9/11 defendants,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “The President and the White House played no role in this process. The President has directed his team to consult, as appropriate, with Defense Department officials and attorneys on this matter.”
The statement comes after the Defense Ministry announced Wednesday that prosecutors had reached a plea deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two others, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, for their roles in masterminding the September 11 terrorist attacks.
9/11 MINE, TWO OTHERS REACH PLEA DEAL AS THEY AWAIT TRIAL; VICTIMS’ FAMILIES ‘VERY DISAPPOINTED’
President Biden (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The deal would end a years-long process, with the case stuck in pretrial proceedings at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with no trial in sight because of concerns about the admissibility of evidence obtained through the CIA’s enhanced interrogation of the three defendants, which critics have denounced as torture.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but family members of the 9/11 victims were informed by the Office of Military Commissions that the suspects would be spared the death penalty as part of the agreement, according to a report by the New York Post.
Although Biden played no role in the deal that was ultimately reached, the president last year rejected a proposal that would have spared the three suspects the death penalty.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a photo released by the FBI, October 10, 2001, in Washington, DC (Getty Images)
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According to a New York Times report describing the deal, which was rejected by Biden in September, the three suspects proposed a deal that would require the Pentagon to accept a guarantee that they would not serve their sentences in solitary confinement, that they would be allowed to eat and pray with other prisoners and that they would receive civilian-run medical care for conditions they claimed were caused by CIA interrogations.
At the same time, some family members of 9/11 victims have expressed disappointment with the Defense Department’s settlement.
“The prosecution and the families have waited 23 years to testify in court and have our loved ones know what these animals did to our loved ones. They have robbed us of that opportunity,” Jim Smith, whose wife Moira Smith was the only female NYPD officer to die in the attacks, told the New York Post. “They committed the worst crime in our country’s history, and they should get the harshest sentence.”
Flowers are placed near the engraving of Sneha Anne Philip’s name at the memorial during ceremonies marking the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, in New York City, September 11, 2011. (Reuters/Carolyn Cole/Pool)
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“I’m very disappointed. We waited patiently for a long time. I wanted the death penalty, the government failed us,” Daniel D’Allara, whose brother John was an NYPD officer killed in the attacks, told the outlet.
