Accused Sept 11 plotters agree to plead guilty at Guantanamo Bay

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba – The man accused of plotting the attacks of Sept 11, 2001, and two of his accomplices have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and murder charges in exchange for a life sentence rather than a death penalty trial in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prosecutors said on July 31.

Prosecutors said the deal was meant to bring some “finality and justice” to the case, particularly for the families of nearly 3,000 people who were killed in the attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.

After talks with prosecutors across 27 months in Guantanamo, defendants Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi reached the deal, which was approved on July 31 by a senior Pentagon official overseeing the war court.

The men have been in US custody since 2003. But the case had become mired in more than a decade of pre-trial proceedings that focused on the question of whether their torture in secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prisons had contaminated the evidence against them.

Word of the deal emerged in a letter from war court prosecutors to Sept 11 family members.

“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 offences, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet,” said the letter, which was signed by Rear-Admiral Aaron C. Rugh, the chief prosecutor for military commissions, and three lawyers on his team.

The letter said the men could submit their pleas in open court as early as next week.

The plea averted what was envisioned as an eventual 12- to 18-month trial, or, alternatively, the possibility of the military judge throwing out confessions that were key to the government’s case.

Colonel Matthew N. McCall, the judge, had been hearing testimony this week and had more hearings scheduled for later in 2024 to decide that and other key pre-trial issues.

Khalid, 59, a US-educated engineer and avowed extremist, was accused of coming up with the idea of hijacking airplanes and flying them into buildings. Prosecutors said he presented Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with the plan in 1996, and then helped train and direct some of the hijackers.

He and Mustafa, 55, were captured together in Pakistan in March 2003 and held in secret CIA prisons until their transfer to the US naval base in Guantanamo in September 2006 for an eventual trial.

By then, interrogators had held them for years incommunicado and tortured them, including subjecting Khalid to 183 rounds of waterboarding, a decision that would stymie years of efforts to put the men on trial.

Walid, who is in his mid-40s, had been described as another deputy in the plot who had helped train some of the hijackers and had carried out missions tasked to him by both Khalid and Osama.

The three men will still face a mini trial of sorts, but probably not before 2025.

At the military commissions, where they were charged, a judge accepts the plea, but a military jury must be empanelled to hear evidence, including testimony from victims of the attacks, and deliver a sentence. By that point, the judge has typically resolved litigation over what evidence can be used at the sentencing proceeding.

The deal stirred both anger and relief among the thousands of relatives of those killed on Sept 11.

Some family members had been fearful that the case would never reach a resolution, and that the defendants would die in US custody without a conviction. Others, wanting a death penalty, had pushed the government to get the case to trial, even at the risk of the sentence being later overturned.

Rear-Adm Rugh said in his letter to the families that, as part of the deal, Khalid and the others had agreed to answer questions from victims’ family members “regarding their roles and reasons for conducting the Sept 11 attacks”.

Under the process, sometimes known as restorative justice, the family members would submit questions by Sept 14, and should receive answers by the end of 2024.

Khalid’s lawyer Gary D. Sowards noted that having Khalid answer “all questions of how and why 9/11 occurred” was an important portion of the agreement.

Two of the original five defendants were not a party to the deal. Ramzi Binalshibh, who was accused of helping to organise a cell of the hijackers in Hamburg, Germany, was found incompetent to stand trial because of mental illness, and his case was severed.

The fifth defendant, known as Ammar al-Baluchi, 46, also was not included in the plea agreement and could face trial alone.

He is the nephew of Khalid and is charged, like Mustafa, with helping the hijackers with finances and travel arrangements while working in the Persian Gulf.

Plea deals had been under discussion since March 2022 but hit a significant snag in September when the White House declined to sign off on conditions sought by the defendants.

The men wanted assurances that they would not serve their sentences in solitary confinement, would have improved contact with their families and continued contact with their lawyers.

Ammar in particular also wanted the United States to pledge to set up a special, civilian-run torture treatment programme for them at the prison.

The Biden administration considered the request for more than a year and then declined to sign off. It was not known if any of those conditions were contained in the agreement approved by Susan Escallier, the senior Pentagon official responsible for overseeing the war court.

The development came in the midst of the 51st round of pre-trial hearings in the case since arraignment in 2012. Khalid and the others were last seen in court almost two weeks ago, for testimony from a psychologist who had interrogated him and other CIA prisoners.

Rear-Adm Rugh and his colleagues wrote in their letter to the families that their decision to agree to guilty pleas after “12 years of pre-trial litigation was not reached lightly. However, it is our collective, reasoned and good-faith judgment that this resolution is the best path to finality and justice in this case”.

It was also signed by Clayton G. Trivett Jr. and Jeffrey D. Groharing, two military prosecutors who had been on the case since the start. NYTIMES