The man accused of plotting the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and two of his accomplices have reached a plea deal with US prosecutors, the Pentagon said Wednesday local time.
The trio have reportedly agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges in exchange for a life sentence.
The agreements with Mohammed and two other accomplices moves the long-running cases —which have been bogged down in pre-trial manoeuvrings for years while the defendants remained held at the Guantanamo military base in Cuba— toward resolution.
“The specific terms and conditions of the pre-trial agreements are not available to the public at this time,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
The New York Times reported that Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi had agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence instead of the death penalty.
A letter to families of the September 11 victims seen by the ABC says as part of the deal the men have agreed to respond to questions about their roles and reasons for conducting the attacks.
The letter says the guilty pleas could be entered as soon as next week or within the next few months.
“We recognise that the status of the case in general, and this news in particular, will understandably and appropriately elicit intense emotion, and we also realise 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,” the letter says.
“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 judgement that this resolution is the best path to finality and justice in this case.”
Such a proposal was detailed by prosecutors in a letter last year but divided the families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 2001 attacks, with some still wanting the defendants to face the ultimate penalty.
All three men have been in custody since 2003.
A sentencing is expected to be held at the earliest mid-next year.
It is not clear where any sentence would be served.
Mohammed claimed to have masterminded attacks from ‘A to Z’
Mohammed is an Al Qaeda militant accused by the US of being the principal architect of the September 11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside Washington.
The trained engineer — who has said he masterminded the 9/11 attacks “from A to Z” — was involved in a string of major plots against the United States, where he had attended university.
In addition to planning the operation to bring down the Twin Towers, Mohammed claims to have personally beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 with his “blessed right hand,” and to have helped in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people.
Bin Attash allegedly trained two of the hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks.
His US interrogators also said he confessed to buying the explosives and recruiting members of the team that killed 17 sailors in an attack on the USS Cole.
Hawsawi is suspected of managing the finance for the 9/11 attacks.
He was arrested in Pakistan on March 1, 2003, and was held in secret prisons before being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006.
Reuters/AFP/ABC
