Prosecutors, Sept. 11 plotters discuss plea deal, sources say
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — Prosecutors have opened talks with lawyers for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and his four codefendants to negotiate a potential plea agreement that would drop the possibility of execution, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.
Guilty pleas in exchange for life sentences could bring to an end the long-running case at the war court, which was set up by the George W. Bush administration and has been mired in pretrial proceedings focusing on the CIA’s torture of the defendants. Nearly a decade after the men were arraigned, the military judge has set no trial start date.
No deal is expected soon. But guilty pleas resulting in life sentences could force the Biden administration to modify its ambition of ending detention operations at Guantanamo Bay and instead rebrand it as a military prison for a few men.
In an earlier, failed attempt at such talks during the Trump administration, the accused plotters demanded that they serve their sentences at Guantanamo, where they are able to pray and eat in groups. They specifically did not want to be sent to the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, where federal inmates are held in solitary confinement up to 23 hours a day.
The five men are accused of directing and training or providing travel arrangements and money to the 19 hijackers who crashed four commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing a total of nearly 3,000 people.
A plea deal would undoubtedly disappoint, if not enrage, death penalty advocates among the victims’ family members.
But other family members, including those troubled by the role of U.S. torture in the case and the delays, might see it as a fitting conclusion.
The path to a trial for the accused plotters of the worst terrorist attack in the United States has been impeded by legal and logistic challenges as well as a nearly two-year closure of the court during the coronavirus pandemic.
The discussions began last week amid the latest setback. The judge, defense and prosecution teams had traveled to Guantanamo Bay for three weeks of hearings meant to address disputes over evidence, particularly showing the role of the FBI in the CIA prison network where Mohammed and his codefendants were tortured after following their capture in Pakistan in 2002 and 2003.
But before they could start, Cheryl Bormann, the lead lawyer for one of the defendants, Walid bin Attash, asked to step down from the case. She cited an unspecified in-house investigation of her “performance and conduct” by the chief defense counsel, Brig. Gen. Jackie Thompson of
the Army.
No details were given. But the issue forced a delay in hearings that could stretch for months and provided an opening, according to a participant in the talks between the prosecution and the defense.
A lead case prosecutor, Clayton Trivett, wrote Wednesday to the defense teams proposing that they discuss “whether pretrial agreements are possible for all five cases.”
Within days, the five defendants and their lawyers met in the courtroom to compile an initial list of requirements for the guilty plea, starting with removing the death penalty from the case. Lawyers for the five men submitted a joint list Monday, participants said.
Although the prosecutors have begun the negotiations, a senior Pentagon official known as the convening authority must approve any deal. That role is currently held by Col. Jeffrey Wood of the Arkansas National Guard, who is also a lawyer in Little Rock, Arkansas, and was appointed to the civilian job by the Trump administration.
Participants said the talks were expected to continue through the month to try to reach some understandings to present to Wood.