Washington: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused as the mastermind of al-Qaida’s Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, has agreed to plead guilty, the Defence Department said Wednesday. The development points to a long-delayed resolution in an attack that killed thousands and altered the course of the United States and much of the Middle East.
Defense lawyers have requested the men receive life sentences in exchange for the guilty pleas, according to letters from the federal government received by relatives of some of the nearly 3,000 people killed outright on the morning of Sept. 11.
Terry Strada, the head of one group of families of the nearly 3,000 direct victims of the 9/11 attacks, invoked the many relatives who have died while awaiting justice for the killings when she heard news of the plea agreement.
“They were cowards when they planned the attack,” she said of the defendants. “And they’re cowards today.”
Pentagon officials declined to immediately release the full terms of the plea bargains.
The U.S. agreement with the men comes more than 16 years after their prosecution began for al-Qaida’s attack. It comes more than 20 years after militants commandeered four commercial airliners to use as fuel-filled missiles, flying three of them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
Al-Qaida hijackers headed the fourth plane to Washington. But crew members and passengers tried to storm the cockpit, and the plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field.
The attack triggered what President George W. Bush’s administration called its war on terror, prompting the U.S. military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and years of U.S. operations against armed extremist groups elsewhere in the Middle East.
The attack and U.S. retaliation brought the overthrow of two governments outright, devastated communities and countries caught in the battle, and played a role in inspiring the 2011 Arab Spring popular uprisings against authoritarian Middle East governments.
At home, the attacks inspired a sharply more militaristic and nationalist turn to American society and culture.
U.S. authorities point to Mohammed as the source of the idea to use planes as weapons. He allegedly received approval from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden to craft what became the 9/11 hijackings and killings. U.S. forces killed bin Laden in 2011.
Authorities captured Mohammed in 2003. Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding 183 times while in CIA custody before coming to Guantanamo, along with other torture and coercive questioning.
