Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a Pakistani national and the alleged mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was arrested in 2003. He has been held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay since 2006. Following negotiations, the U.S. Department of Defense announced on Wednesday that Mohammed and two of his accomplices have agreed to plead guilty.
While the Pentagon has withheld specific details, The New York Times reports that the deal allows Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to avoid a trial where he could have faced the death penalty, opting instead to serve a life sentence.
All three faced charges of terrorism and the murder of 2,976 people in the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
The Guantanamo prison is situated in Cuba, on land leased to the U.S. indefinitely in 1903
They were never tried, as prosecuting them was likely to encounter significant hurdles, mainly due to the information obtained from them through systematic torture at CIA black sites.
In March 2022, the defense attorneys confirmed that negotiations were underway to reach a plea agreement to avoid a trial before a military tribunal.
The defendants requested and received assurances that they would remain at the Guantanamo naval base and would not be transferred to a federal prison on the U.S. mainland, where they would serve their sentences in solitary confinement.
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