Alleged 9/11 Mastermind To Plead Guilty, Avoid Death Penalty

The US has reached a plea deal with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants accused of plotting the 2001 terror attacks, according to the Defense Department, Oren Liebermann and Lauren del Valle reported for CNN.

The three men agreed to plead guilty to all charges, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charging sheet.

The pretrial agreement—reached after 27 months of negotiations—takes the death penalty off the table for Mohammed, Walid Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, prosecutors said in a letter obtained by CNN, sent to the families of 9/11 victims and survivors.

After beginning negotiations in March 2022, the three men agreed to plead guilty to all charges, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charging sheet, the families were told.

Mohammed and his co-defendants will enter guilty pleas at a plea hearing that could come as early as next week, according to the letter.

The government faced the difficult challenge of advancing a case that had stalled over the course of the two decades since Mohammed’s capture in Pakistan in 2003 for his alleged involvement in the terror attacks, Haley Britzky also reported for CNN.

“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 pretrial agreement will be met with mixed reactions among the thousands of family members who lost loved ones,” prosecutors wrote in the letter.

“The decision to enter into a pretrial agreement after 12 years of pretrial 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.”

The plea agreement avoids what would have been a long and complicated death penalty trial against Mohammed.

“This is the least bad deal in the real world that would ever happen,” said Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert and CNN national security analyst who has written extensively about Osama bin Laden.