Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and two fellow plotters have entered into a plea agreement with the government, the U.S. Department of Defense announced on Wednesday.
The plea terms are not yet public, but a July 31 letter from the chief prosecutor’s office and the director of a victims liaison group states that Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi have agreed to plead guilty.
“In exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment, these three accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet, and to be later sentenced by a panel of military officers,” per the letter.
It adds that after their guilty pleas are entered later this year, the three could begin their sentencing hearing as early as the summer of 2025.
Mohammed, commonly referred to by his initials as KSM, is described in the 9/11 Commission Report as “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks” for his role in proposing to crash hijacked airplanes into U.S. buildings to Al-Qaeda’s then-leader Osama bin Laden.
Attash was also involved in planning the downing of four planes, as well as the bombing of the USS Cole in Aden in 2000. Al-Hawsawi facilitated financial transactions for the attacks and helped the Sept. 11 hijackers arrange their travel from Afghanistan to the United States.
Plagued by decades of delays
In the letter to the families, Rear Adm. Aaron Rugh, chief prosecutor for military commissions, and his colleagues note that many families of the victims will likely oppose the decision to offer a plea deal to the Al-Qaeda leaders.
“We also realize that the decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement will be met with mixed reactions amongst the thousands of family members who lost loved ones,” Rugh wrote. “The decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement after 12 years of pre-trial litigation was not reached lightly.
“It is our collective, reasoned and good-faith judgment that this resolution is the best path to finality and justice in this case,” he added.
KSM, Attash and al-Hawsawi were arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and later transferred to the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. The attempt to try them and other prisoners held at Guantánamo in military tribunals has been plagued by decades of procedural, logistical and legal hurdles and delays.
One of the principal legal issues in prosecuting the three was whether the evidence against them had been tainted after they were tortured by the CIA. A 2014 Senate report on CIA interrogation techniques noted that in March 2003, KSM was waterboarded 183 times and was also subjected to “rectal rehydration” applied “without documented medical necessity.”
The military commissions at Guantanamo have reportedly cost about $1 billion, at a rate of $100 million annually.
As part of the plea agreement, the trio agreed to answer questions from victims’ families about their roles and reasons for carrying out the 9/11 attacks. The families of victims will also be able to testify at the sentencing hearing of the three Al-Qaeda operatives.
