Alleged 9/11 mastermind may avoid execution
Assurances sought in trade for guilty pleas
The alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and those claimed to be his accomplices could escape the death penalty as part of a plea deal being negotiated with U.S. prosecutors.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others have been held in Guantanamo Bay since 2006 over their alleged role in the 2001 attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people.
The long-running case has been mired by legal and logistical hurdles, in particular pre-trial proceedings examining the CIA's use of torture to obtain testimony from the five men.
Prosecutors were partly motivated to discuss a plea deal after a military jury condemned the torture of another Guantanamo inmate as “a stain on the moral fibre of America,” according to The New York Times, which first reported the negotiations.
It comes nearly a decade after the five terror suspects' arraignment and more than 20 years after the 9/11 attacks, the worst terror attack in the U.S.
The five men were charged in 2008 with plotting or assisting the hijackers who flew four planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Lawyers for the five men have requested certain assurances in exchange for guilty pleas, beginning with the removal of the death penalty.
Such a deal is likely to outrage some of the 9/11 victims' families, a number of whom have been vocal in advocating for the perpetrators to be executed.
The five defendants may also seek to serve out their sentences at Guantanamo, where they are able to pray and eat in groups, rather than in a high-security facility in the U.S. where they could be placed in solitary confinement.
Such a move would hamper Joe Biden's moves to shutter detention facilities on the U.S. base in Cuba.
Any plea deal would need final approval from a Pentagon official.