The US Department of Defense said on Wednesday that on September 11, 2001 United States But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the al-Qaeda attacks, has agreed to plead guilty.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his accomplices, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hussawi, are expected to file applications with a military commission in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, next week.
According to the American news agency AP, letters written by the federal government to the families of some of the nearly 3,000 people killed on the morning of September 11, 2001, state that defense attorneys have offered to plead guilty to these people. They have demanded a life sentence.
Nine eleven Terry Strada, head of a group of families of nearly 3,000 direct victims of the attacks, spoke of the dozens of relatives who died awaiting justice upon hearing the plea deal.
“They were cowards when they planned the attack and they are still cowards,” he said of the defendants.
Pentagon officials declined to immediately release the full terms of the deal.
According to the British news agency Reuters, a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the agreement includes that in exchange for pleas to the criminals, they will be released. death row will not be given.
The official said the terms of the deal were not made public but acknowledged that a life sentence is possible.
The US deal with these men comes 16 years after they were prosecuted for the al-Qaeda attack.
The United States maintains that more than 20 years ago, militants hijacked four commercial planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in New York.
Al Qaeda hijackers took the fourth plane to Washington, but crew members and passengers tried to break into the cockpit and the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
As a result of the attack, the administration of then-US President George W. Bush launched the War on Terrorism, which led to US military attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq and several years of fighting armed extremist groups in the Middle East. US operations continued until
The attack and the U.S. response overthrew two governments, devastated people and countries in the war, and helped fuel the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings against authoritarian regimes in the Middle East.
Domestically, these attacks made American society and culture more militarized and nationalistic.
US officials credit Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the source of the idea to use the planes as weapons. He allegedly got permission for the project from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US forces in a covert operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011.
American authorities arrested Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in March 2003 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was subjected to 183 waterboarding and other forms of torture and forced interrogation while in CIA custody prior to his arrival at Guantanamo.
The use of torture has been a major obstacle to US efforts to prosecute those held at the military commission at Guantanamo, largely due to the inadmissibility of evidence of abuse.
Most of the proceedings were delayed due to violence
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Daphne Aviator, director of the Amnesty International USA human rights group, said Wednesday that she welcomes news of some accountability for the attacks.
He urged the Biden administration to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center where people detained in the so-called war on terror are being held. Many of them have been found innocent but are awaiting approval to travel to other countries.
Aviator added that ‘the Biden administration must take all necessary steps to ensure that the state’s program of enforced disappearances, torture and other abuses never happens again.’
Strada, the national chairwoman of 9/11 Families United, a group of victims’ families, was in Manhattan federal court for a hearing in one of several civil cases when she heard the news of the settlement.
Many families just want to see the accused plead guilty, Strada said.
“Personally I wanted a trial and they just took away the justice I expected, a trial and conviction,” she said.
Michael Burke, a family member who received government notice of the plea bargain, condemned the long wait for justice and the consequences.
Burke, whose fire captain brother was killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, said: ‘The Nuremberg trials took several months or a year. It has always been a shame to me that even after 23 years these people have not been punished for their attacks or crimes. I never understood how it took so long.’
“I think people would be surprised if you went back in time and told the people who just saw the towers fall, ‘Oh, hey, in 23 years, these people who committed this crime,'” he said. are responsible for what we have just seen, they will be dealt with so that they can avoid death and life in prison.’
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2024-08-01 05:54:56
