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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, along with two co-conspirators, Walid Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa al Hawsawi, have entered into plea agreements with the U.S. Department of Defense. The deal, reached after 27 months of negotiations, will spare them from the death penalty, thus avoiding a trial seeking capital punishment.
Mohammed, a Kuwaiti-Pakistani engineer, and his associates have been held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for nearly two decades. The plea agreements were announced on Wednesday, with a plea hearing that could come as early as next week, according to a letter obtained by CNN.
The specifics of the pretrial agreements are not currently available to the public. However, the plea deals bring partial closure to a case that has been mired in legal delays over whether evidence extracted through torture during their interrogations was admissible in court.
The plea deals have sparked mixed reactions. While some family members of the victims want the defendants put to death, others view the plea bargains as the only way to resolve the case. The Biden administration has been seeking to close the Guantanamo prison facility, which at its peak held nearly 800 detainees.