As Team Biden’s Department of Justice and Democrat allies in state prosecutions are intent on having former President Donald Trump go on trial before the 2024 election takes place, the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was sent to Guantanamo Bay for trial in 2006, appears set to be offered a plea deal by the Biden administration which takes the death penalty off the table.
President Donald Trump had ruled out any plea bargain for the terrorists. But now the Biden Pentagon’s Office of the Chief Prosecutor is looking to deal, likely, analysts say, to get rid of the issue before the 2024 election and continue to put the focus on the Trump indictments.
The Pentagon and FBI sent an update of the plea consideration to several families of 9/11 victims in a letter.
The letter said that, while no plea agreement “has been finalized, and may never be finalized, it is possible that a PTA, in this case, would remove the possibility of the death penalty”.
The families are outraged.
Jim Riches, who lost his son Jimmy in the terrorist attack, said: “How can you have any faith in it? No matter how many letters they send, until I see it, I won’t believe it. … Those guys are still alive. Our children are dead”.
Peter Brady, whose father was killed in the 9/11 attack argued that the case needed to go through “the legal process” and not a plea deal.
It’s about “holding people responsible, and they’re taking that away with this plea”, Brady said.
The prosecution of Mohammed and four others held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has been repeatedly delayed, allegedly due to legal reasons over their interrogation under torture while they were in CIA custody.
Mohammed presented the idea of the terror attack on the US to Al Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, the US 9/11 Commission concluded.
The commission’s investigation also found Mohammed received authorization from bin Laden to mastermind the 9/11 attacks, while the four other men are alleged to have supported the hijackers in various ways.
Of the possible plea deal for Mohammed and his fellow defendants, the New York Post wrote in an Aug. 17 editorial: “A plea deal that spares 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the death penalty? Hell no. … it’s beyond obscene that they’d even ask”.
Whatever the Biden team’s thinking on the plea deal is, the Post added, “it would be an injustice. KSM’s terror attacks killed nearly 3,000 innocents in the Twin Towers, Pentagon and aboard United 93 — and the planners hoped for far more”.
Since there has never been any question of guilt, the Post continued, “It’s ridiculous that the military lawyers have dragged the case out so long, and utter madness that they’re now looking for an escape hatch. Get the trial started, demand death and finally send KSM to his deserved fate in the depths of Hell”.
