The US government reached a plea deal with three defendants charged with planning the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind. It’s the most significant development in years in the 9/11 case — which may finally bring some survivors and families of 9/11 victims a sense of closure, but also highlights the broken legal system at Guantanamo Bay.
Although the Defense Department has not yet released details of the deal — and the defendants have not formally entered into it — Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi will reportedly plead guilty to war crimes in exchange for life in prison. Earlier, they faced the possibility of death penalty if found guilty.
The plea deal means the three will not face any trial at the prison’s notoriously slow military commission, a justice system set up only to try defendants at Guantanamo that is fraught with delays and complications.
It means that, almost 23 years after the attacks, the cases will be solved, although what will happen to the prison where 30 people are still incarcerated, although most have been released, remains to be seen.
Who are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa Al-Hawsawi?
These three are some of Guantanamo’s most notorious detainees.
Mohammad, also known as KSM or Mukhtar, was called the architect of 9/11 and claimed responsibility for its planning.From A to Z“He is one 59- or 60-year-olds A member of the Baloch ethnic group and a Pakistani citizen.
He traveled to Afghanistan and joined al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the attack, shortly after graduating from a college in North Carolina in 1986. Mohammed is alleged to have proposed plans to fly the plane into the World Trade Center. -Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden joined the group in 1996 and officially in 1998 or 1999. He also allegedly trained 19 hijackers. He was captured in Pakistan in 2003 before being held at a CIA black site in multiple countries for three years. There she was subjected to torture, including waterboarding, forced nudity and sleep deprivation. Carol Rosenberg of the New York Times Wrote earlier this year.
The extensive torture Mohammed endured – he was waterboarded 183 times – made a fair trial impossible. In the US legal system, evidence produced under torture is inadmissible in court; That is not the case with military commissionsAlthough there are some judges Complies with US regulations In rejecting evidence or cases obtained through torture. (This was one of the issues seen in the complex commission trial.)
Bin Attash, also known as Khallad, is a Yemeni citizen. According to Rosenberg, he moved to Afghanistan at the age of 14 to take part in the civil war against the US-backed Northern Alliance. He is accused of training the two hijackers as well as conducting research to coordinate flight times and testing flight security by smuggling a knife onto the flight. The The DOD claims he was a close associate and bodyguard of bin Laden (although he lost part of a leg to injuries sustained in Afghanistan), and he participated in the planning and execution of other attacks, including one on the USS Cole.
According to Bin Attash’s own testimonyHe was extensively tortured at the CIA black site for nearly three and a half years.
Mustafa Al Hawsawi, also known as Hashim Abd Al-Rahman, Zahir, Ayyub and Muhammad Adnan, is the third person in the plea agreement. He is a Saudi national accused of conspiring to finance and supply logistics to some of the hijackers. He was captured in Pakistan in 2003, and held at the CIA-run black site at Guantanamo until 2004, when the site was forced to close. He was placed in other black sites, Where he was also tortured.
Two other men, Ammar al-Baluchi (Muhammad’s nephew) and Ramji bin al-Shib, were also part of the capital case, but not part of the plea agreement.
The agreement closes a chapter in Guantanamo’s history
Former President Barack Obama and current President Joe Biden both pledged to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, which is notorious because the George W. Bush administration flouted international law both in opening it and in the treatment of detainees there. Its continued operations, 23 years after the war on terror began, are contrary to international laws and norms that the United States insists on, such as against torture and arbitrary detention.
This contradiction has been seen repeatedly during legal proceedings held there: “Whenever military commissions have to resolve a factual or legal issue, the United States government prefers to cover up or confirm the torture and abuse of prisoners over arriving at the truth. Justice and Accountability for What Happened on 9/11,” J. Wells Dixon, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, told Vox in an interview.
The sentencing agreement will likely give inmates a chance to speak, Dixon said — about their role in the attack and the torture they endured — and give victims’ families a chance to ask the defendants questions. A sentencing hearing date has not yet been released.
But for the alleged conspirators, the deal is only part of the story. The other part is the impact it has had on the survivors and the families of the victims — some of whom disappointed With the results and others who are relieved the process is almost over.
“I think I’m more aware of the fact that there will never be closure,” Leila Murphy, whose father was killed in the attack when she was a young child and who is part of the advocacy group 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrow, said in an interview. “But in a certain way, it’s like closing a chapter. this [trial] Just dragging it out for so long.”
