United States prosecutors have reached a pretrial agreement with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other high-ranking Al Qaeda members, Department of Defense officials announced on Wednesday, sparing all three terrorists the death penalty in exchange for their guilty pleas. The plea deal, which reportedly comes as a crushing disappointment to the families of the 2,976 victims of the September 11 attacks, will instead see the defendants sentenced to life imprisonment in the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
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The Department of Defense has not made public the specific terms and conditions of the plea agreement, but victims’ families were notified via a letter from the Office of Military Commissions that the death penalty had been taken off the table.
“In exchange for 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,” wrote Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh, the OMC’s chief prosecutor.
Alongside Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi are excepted to submit their pleas to a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay as soon as next week, with sentencing to follow sometime next summer.
Two other men, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Ramzi Bin al Shibh, were originally arraigned alongside the three defendants in 2008, but prosecutors have not yet announced plea agreements with them.
Per their defense attorneys, Mohammed, Bin ‘Attash, and al Hawsawi have also agreed to respond to questions from victims’ families “regarding their roles and reasons for conducting” the attacks within 90 days.
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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