The Biden administration has rejected conditions that lawyers for defendants in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had sought in a possible plea agreement in exchange for guilty pleas, as the president felt the deal wasn’t “appropriate.”
The five defendants put forward multiple conditions, including an end to their solitary confinement and a promise of medical care for the alleged abuses they suffered at the hands of the CIA, a spokesperson for the National Security Council (NSC) said on Sept. 6, according to the New York Post.
However, President Joe Biden “concurred with the Secretary of Defense’s recommendation not to accept the Joint Policy Principles that had been proposed by the 9/11 Defendants as a basis for plea negotiations.”
“The 9/11 attacks were the single worst assault on the United States since Pearl Harbor. The President does not believe that accepting the joint policy principles as a basis for a pretrial agreement would be appropriate in these circumstances,” the spokesperson said.
“The Administration is committed to ensuring that the military commissions process is fair and delivers justice to the victims, survivors, families, and those accused of crimes.”
The deal would have involved the 9/11 suspects pleading guilty to their crimes and accepting life sentences rather than facing the death penalty.
Lawyers on both sides have been negotiating for about a year and a half and have been waiting for almost a year to see whether President Biden would oppose or accept the conditions.
With the president’s rejection of the potential deal, it’s now up to military prosecutors and defense lawyers to negotiate a new agreement.
While more than two decades have passed since the Sept. 11 attacks, the case is still in the pretrial stage, with no set trial date. Pretrial hearings have been going on for more than a decade.
The case has been dragged on because of the CIA’s alleged torture of defendants during their first years in custody, which led to questions about how admissible the suspects’ statements would be.
The 2001 attacks, the deadliest in U.S. history, killed 2,977 people. It was Mr. Mohammed who proposed the idea to Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist group at the time.
He had been authorized by bin Laden to carry out the attacks. The four other defendants are alleged to have aided the hijackers.
Plea Deal Opposition, 9/11 Commemoration
In August, the Biden administration sent a letter to the families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that the suspected terrorists could avoid the death penalty under plea agreements that were being considered. Some families were disappointed with the government’s position on the matter.
Jim Riches, who lost his firefighter son, Jimmy, told The Associated Press that he laughed bitterly after receiving the letter.
“How can you have any faith in it?”
“[The letter] gives us little hope,” he said. He also emphasized that the people who carried out the attacks are still alive while his and others’ children are dead.
On Aug. 28, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), along with Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, stating that they opposed any agreement between the Biden administration and the 9/11 defendants.
Mr. Cruz hailed the Biden administration’s recent decision in the case.
“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other plotters who planned the 9/11 attacks are mass murderers who deserve the death penalty. Despite this, the Biden administration was prepared to give them a plea deal. That would have been outrageous.
“The victims of those attacks have been patiently awaiting justice for over 20 years ... Today, the Biden administration took a step in the right direction by rejecting the defendants’ plea deal, and I hope we can move forward and try the murderers.”
To commemorate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, U.S. presidents have often traveled to at least one of the attack sites—the World Trade Center in New York; the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia; or an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
This will be the first time that a U.S. president hasn’t commemorated the attacks at either the White House or one of the three attack sites.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff will commemorate the event in a ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York City.
