The United States has reached a plea deal with the accused 9/11 mastermind and two other alleged terrorists, and due to alleged “political hacks” in Congress, per ex-Attorney General Eric Holder, the three men will avoid the death penalty; a move that the FDNY and many more Americans are slamming.
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In a letter obtained by USA TODAY, the U.S. reached a plea deal with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his top lieutenants (Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi). After 27 months of negotiations which began in March 2022, the three men have agreed to plead guilty “in exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment” for the 9/11 attacks.
The pretrial agreement, which revealed the news, was issued by the Department of Defense and sent to the families of 9/11 victims and survivors shortly before the Defense Dept. announced the news in a press release Wednesday evening (July 31). According to the letter, Mohammed and his co-defendants are expected to enter guilty pleas at a plea hearing that may take place as early as next week.
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In their letter about the accused 9/11 terrorists taking a plea deal, the Department of Defense’s Office of the Chief Prosecutor for Military Commissions wrote, “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.”
In the letter, prosecutors wrote, “We recognize that the status of the case in general, and this news in particular, will understandably and appropriately elicit intense emotion, and 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. The decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement 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.”
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An official release shared on the U.S. Department of Defense website added, “The three accused men, along with Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Ramzi Bin al Shibh, were first charged jointly and arraigned on June 5, 2008, and were again charged jointly and arraigned a second time on May 5, 2012, in connection with their alleged roles in the September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States.”
Additionally, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is known as “KSM” by U.S. intelligence agents, is described as the “principal architect of the 9/11 attacks” in the 2004 report by the 9/11 Commission. In court documents, he is also described as an “al-Qaeda militant” behind the assaults on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C.
The al-Qaeda operative has been jailed at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay prison for nearly two decades. He was first captured by federal authorities in his native Pakistan nation in 2003 and sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2006. The other two men who took pleas were also taken into custody in 2003 and sent to prisons overseas and then to Guantanamo.
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Reacting to the new news of the accused 9/11 terrorists avoiding the death penalty due to the political hacks” in Congress, a union representing the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) says its rank and file are “disgusted and disappointed.”
On Thursday (August 1), FDNY Uniformed Firefighters Association President Andrew Ansbro spoke on the accused 9/11 terrorists’ plea deal and said, “On behalf of New York City firefighters, especially the survivors of the September 11th terrorist attack who are living with the illnesses and injuries that were inflicted upon us that day, we are disgusted and disappointed that these three terrorists were given a plea deal and allowed to escape the ultimate justice while each month three more heroes from the FDNY are dying from World Trade Center illnesses.”
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Additionally, former Attorney General Eric Holder also slammed the “political hacks” that blocked the trial of the accused 9/11 terrorists who will now avoid the death penalty for the 2001 attacks. Holder said that when he was in office in 2009, he promised to seek the death penalty for the accused, but his plan was opposed by Republicans and many Democrats in Congress, who blocked the transfer of any detainees from Guantanamo Bay to America to face justice. Holder blames Congress for blocking the federal trial that would have resulted in a swifter and effective justice.
On Thursday (August 1), he told NBC News, “The people responsible for structuring this awful deal did the best they could. They were dealt a bad hand by the political hacks and those who lost faith in our justice system. If my decision to try KSM and his confederates in the tested and effective federal court system had been followed they would be nothing more than a memory today. Those who opposed my determination should apologize to those who lost loved ones on one of America’s darkest days. I hope the media will ask them if they will now admit the cravenness of their actions.”
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