WASHINGTON – An al Qaeda operative jailed at Guantanamo prison for nearly two decades and considered to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks has pleaded guilty along with two of his lieutenants in the terror organization, the U.S. Department of Defense said in a letter to victims' families Wednesday.
The letter, obtained by USA TODAY, said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his top lieutenants agreed to plead guilty "in exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment."
"These three accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet, and to be later sentenced by a panel of military officers," according to the letter from the Department of Defense's Office of the Chief Prosecutor for Military Commissions.
Mohammed, or KSM as he is called by U.S. intelligence agents, is described as the “principal architect of the 9/11 attacks” in the 2004 report by the 9/11 Commission.Two of his accomplices in the planning for the 9/11 attack, Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawasawi, also entered into plea agreements Wednesday, the DOD said in a statement.
All three men have been in U.S. custody since 2003, spending time at Guantanamo and prisons overseas.
Mohammed is described in court papers as an al-Qaeda militant and the principal architect of the 9/11 assault on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside Washington. Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks, which launched a U.S. offensive labeled the War on Terror.
Federal authorities captured him in his native Pakistan native in 2003 and he was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
Defense officials told families in the Wednesday letter that they will have an opportunity to speak at a summer 2025 sentencing hearing about the impact that the 9/11 attacks had on their loved ones.
"We recognize that the status of the case in general, and this news in particular, will understandably and appropriately elicit intense emotion, and we also realize that the decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement will be met with mixed reactions amongst the thousands of family members who lost loved ones," the letter said. "The decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement after 12 years of pre-trial litigation was not reached lightly; however, it is our collective, reasoned, and good-faith judgment that this resolution is the best path to finality and justice in this case."
9/11 families previously said they didn't want plea deals
The Department of Defense first disclosed last year that prosecutors were working on a plea deal that would spare Mohammed and his accomplices their lives.
Many 9/11 families slammed the potential agreement at that time, telling USA TODAY it amounted to a slap in the face to families seeking answers and accountability.
"The fact that there are now potential plea deals being offered right at the anniversary, it’s just a horrible, terrible feeling of betrayal,” Terry Strada told USA TODAY in the story. Strada's husband Tom died on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. “I mean, justice has not been served in two decades. How much more do they expect the families to be able to take? People are dying without seeing justice done.”
President Joe Biden also issued a statement when the plea deals were first proposed, saying he concurred with the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s recommendation not to accept deals suggested by the 9/11 defendants and their lawyers.
“The Administration,” the White House said in a 2023 statement to USA TODAY, “is committed to ensuring that the military commissions process is fair and delivers justice to the victims, survivors, families, and those accused of crimes.”
Investigators who worked on the case argued a plea agreement would deprive the public of the kind of official record produced in open court.
"The American people deserve to hear what the evidence is and not be satisfied with the fact that their government is telling them, well, we have these people, and they are guilty,” former FBI Agent Frank Pellegrino told USA TODAY at the time.
Highly educated, tortured in CIA custody
In CIA custody, interrogators subjected Mohammed to “enhanced interrogation techniques” including waterboarding him 183 times, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's 2014 report on the agency’s detention and interrogation programs.
The 9/11 Commission report describes Mohammed as “highly educated” and the “model of the terrorist entrepreneur.”
KSM orchestrated various terrorist plots, according to the report, including “car bombing, political assassination, aircraft bombing, hijacking, reservoir poisoning, and, ultimately, the use of aircraft as missiles guided by suicide operatives.”
He grew up in Kuwait but traces his ethnic roots to the Baluchistan region between Pakistan and Iran, the report says. He was raised in a religious family, joined the Muslim Brotherhood at 16 and became “enamored of violent jihad at youth camps in the desert.”
In 1983, he moved from Kuwait to the U.S. to attend Chowan College, a small Baptist school in North Carolina. He transferred a semester later to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro and earned a degree in December 1986, the report says.
KSM took up the anti-Soviet Afghan cause soon after graduating, according to the 9/11 Commission. He traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he fell in with notable Afghan mujahideen, or holy warriors, who became his mentors.
