A plea deal for the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and his two accomplices is being criticized by some victims’ families, New York firefighters and high-profile Republicans.
Critics say the deal will effectively prevent the public from knowing what really happened and claim that those primarily responsible for nearly 3,000 deaths deserve nothing less than death.
Republicans are pointing their ire directly at President Biden and Vice President Harris — even though the White House has said it played no role in the negotiations.
“The Biden-Harris administration has done the unthinkable: They have agreed to a plea deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and two of his accomplices,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La. ) wrote in a post on social platform X.
The deal with the Office of Military Commissions, announced Wednesday, includes a life sentence for Mohammad and the two others, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi, in exchange for a guilty plea. All three are awaiting trial at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and face the death penalty.
Two others detained at Guantánamo Bay and accused of planning the 9/11 attacks have not yet signed a plea deal.
Although the agreement brings partial closure to a case that has dragged on for two decades, many family members of those who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks are unhappy.
The union representing New York City firefighters said its people are “disgusted and disappointed” by the agreement.
“On behalf of the New York City firefighters, especially the survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attack who are living with the illnesses and injuries inflicted on us that day, we are disgusted and disappointed that these three terrorists received a plea deal and were been authorized to do so. to escape supreme justice, while every month three more FDNY heroes die from World Trade Center diseases,” Andrew Ansbro, president of the FDNY Uniformed Firefighters Association, said in a statement Thursday.
Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) called the agreement a “sweetheart deal” and directed the blame toward the Biden administration.
“Now think about where we have arrived. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have turned the Justice Department into a weapon to go after their political opponents, but they are cutting a sweetheart deal with the 9/11 terrorists,” Vance, former President Trump’s running mate, told attendees at a event. campaign rally in Glendale, Arizona, on Wednesday night. “We need a president who kills terrorists and doesn’t negotiate with them.”
And Brett Eagleson, president of the 9/11 Justice group, a self-described “grassroots movement” of victims’ families, also said Thursday that his organization was “deeply troubled” by the plea deals.
In an interview with The Hill, Eagleson said there was a “sense of betrayal” after the plea deal was reached without consulting the families, who have long opposed any plea deal.
“All Americans deserve the right to justice and we deserve a trial,” he said. “The real tragedy here is that what a plea deal does is subvert the truth, subvert the justice system and deny family members access to a trial. And the reason a trial is so important is because it helps us understand what happened that day.”
Some families are also suing Saudi Arabia in a civil case pending in a Manhattan court as they seek to hold the kingdom accountable for its alleged role in orchestrating the attacks, along with a full account of what happened on 9/11.
Eagleson said the plea deal complicates his ability to get to the truth and discover what the five conspirators knew about alleged Saudi involvement.
“I understand that the public and family members will have the opportunity to ask questions,” he said, “but it is not yet clear to me how those questions will be asked. [and] whether or not the answers to these questions will be admissible elsewhere.”
The three men are accused of providing training, money and other assistance to the 19 terrorists who hijacked four commercial jets and flew them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City; the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia; and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania – the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil.
Mohammad, also known as KSM, is accused of being the main mastermind of the 9/11 plots, along with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who US troops killed in 2011.
The three men, along with the other two who did not sign the agreement, were initially jointly charged and indicted in June 2008. They were jointly charged and indicted again in May 2012. These charges were brought before a military commission, or court, to try suspects during war.
A separate indictment of the five 9/11 conspirators was reached in 2009 in New York under the Department of Justice, but Congress in 2011 blocked any transfer of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners to stand trial.
The military commission created at Guantánamo Bay sentenced only eight people, six through plea bargains. Four of them were shot down. The only person convicted of a charge related to the 9/11 attacks is Zacarias Moussaoui, referred to as the 20th hijacker because he was detained in August 2001, before the attacks.
The plea deal was reached this week amid concerns that evidence obtained through the Central Intelligence Agency’s intense interrogation of the three men – denounced as torture by critics – will not be admissible in court.
Adam Hickey, a former U.S. federal prosecutor who helped indict the five defendants accused of conducting the attacks in the federal case, said the U.S. likely secured the best possible deal by avoiding a trial.
“The military commission process seemed incapable of reaching a judgment,” he said. “It raises the question of whether they would ever have been tried in a military commission, whether military commissions are capable of carrying out the kind of complex national security cases that” federal courts handle.
“I don’t see what the alternative was,” Hickey added. “Anyone who says you should have waited for a trial seems not to be following the [years] of delays in military commissions.”
Rear Adm. Aaron Rugh, chief prosecutor for the Office of Military Commissions, notified families of victims of the 9/11 attacks about the deal, saying that in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, “these three defendants agreed to plead guilty to all the crimes charged, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed on the charge sheet.”
The pre-trial agreement was reached after 27 months of negotiations with military prosecutors, which began in March 2022.
The White House learned of the commission’s decision on Wednesday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Thursday.
“We had no role in this process. The president had no role, the vice president had no role, I had no role and the White House had no role,” Sullivan said. Biden “directed his team to consult, as appropriate, with Department of Defense officials and attorneys on this matter. These consultations are ongoing.”
But such insistence is unlikely to calm anger among family members and Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).
“The Biden-Harris administration’s cowardice in the face of terror is a national disgrace,” McConnell wrote on X. “The plea deal with terrorists, including those behind the 9/11 attacks, is a sickening abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
