The man accused of being the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks and his two co-defendants have agreed to plead guilty, say US officials.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi are expected to enter the pleas at the military commission at Guantanamo Bay as soon as next week.
According to prosecutors quoted by the New York Times, the three defendants have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges in exchange for a life sentence instead of facing a death penalty trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The defendants have been in US custody since 2003.
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Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 attack which saw suicide attackers hijacking planes and flying them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon HQ in Washington and crashing one in a Pennsylvania field.
Reports of a deal came about in a letter sent to the families of the victims by Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh, the chief prosecutor for military commissions, and three lawyers on his team.
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“In exchange for the 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,” the letter reads.
It was reported last year that Mohammed, the suspected main conspirator of the worst terror attack in American history, would potentially manage to escape the death penalty due to plea agreements being considered at the time.
Families of the 9/11 victims are yet to get justice over the 2001 attacks because of questions over whether their torture at the hands of the CIA had contaminated the evidence against them.
While it is likely the defendants will appear in person to plead guilty at Guantanamo Bay next week, they are not likely to be sentenced until later next year, Sky’s US partner network, NBC News, reports.
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It was Mohammed who presented the idea of such an attack like 9/11 on the US to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the United States’ 9/11 Commission concluded.
The Pentagon said in a statement: “The Convening Authority for Military Commissions, Susan Escallier, has entered into pretrial agreements with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, three of the co-accused in the 9/11 case.
“The specific terms and conditions of the pretrial agreements are not available to the public at this time.
“The three accused, along with Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Ramzi Bin al Shibh, were initially charged jointly and arraigned on June 5, 2008, and then were again charged jointly and arraigned a second time on May 5, 2012, in connection with their alleged roles in the September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States.”
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