The death penalty is off the table after the United States reached a plea deal with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two others
The Defense Department announced the deal with the three accused of plotting the 2001 terror attacks CNN reported.
The agreement was reached after 27 months of negotiations. It removes the death penalty for Mohammed, Walid Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa al Hawsawi.
Prosecutors outlined the agreement said in a letter, sent to the families of 9/11 victims and survivors.
The Department of Defense announced news of the agreement in a press release Wednesday evening.
Negotiations started in March 2022.
The three defendants agreed to plead guilty to all charges — including the murder of the 2,976 people, according to the letter.
The three will enter guilty pleas at a plea hearing that be held as early as next week, the letter read.
“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,” prosecutors wrote. “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.”
In the end, the plea agreement circumvents a likely lengthy 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.
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.
“They were still in pre-trial hearings,” Bergen told CNN. “Getting some kind of deal is better.”
