United States Defense Ministry said on July 31 that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, · Sheikh ·Mohammed, and two of his accomplices, accused of planning the 9·11 terrorist attacks, had agreed to plead guilty. This is more than a decade after the trio were formally charged.
Khalid · Sheikh Mohammed · and his co-conspirators Waleed· Ben · Atash, Mustafa, Ahmed · · Hosavi are being held in the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. They are expected to stand trial at the military council in Guantanamo as early as next week, according to the Associated Press.
United States Defense Department officials refused to immediately release the full terms of the plea agreement.
The Associated Press reported, citing a letter sent by the United States federal government to relatives of some of the victims of the 9·11 attacks, that defense attorneys for the defendants had asked the three men to accept life sentences in exchange for plea agreements. A United States official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the three men almost certainly reached a plea deal in exchange for not being sentenced to death.
United States September 11, 2001, the terrorist group was attacked by Al-Qaida, and terrorists hijacked four United States civilian airliners, two of which crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, one crashed into a corner of the Pentagon in Washington, and one crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, leaving no one on board. The series of attacks killed about 3,000 people and caused hundreds of billions of dollars in economic damage.
According to AFP, Khalid· Sheikh Mohammed · about 60 years old and a Kuwait of Pakistani origin. At the end of the 80s of the 20th century, he acted in Afghanistan with ·bin Laden bin Laden, the former leader of al-Qaeda · who had been killed by the United States, and was considered one of ·bin Laden's "most trusted and smart" deputies, and was the main planner of the "9·11" incident.
Khalid · Sheikh Mohammed · arrested in Pakistan in March 2003. He spent three years in a secret CIA prison in the United States, during which he was subjected to 183 waterboarding and other forms of torture and forced interrogation, before being imprisoned in Guantanamo, Cuba, in 2006.
United States Ministry of Defence statement said that Khalid· Sheikh · Mohammed were initially jointly indicted and arraigned on June 5, 2008, and again on May 5, 2012. United States military prosecutors at the special military court at the Guantánamo naval base formally charged the three and two other suspects with murder, terrorist activities and attacks on civilians, seeking to sentence them to death.
The plea agreement came more than 10 years after the three were formally charged and more than 20 years after the 9·11 attacks.
Michael ·Burke was one of the relatives of the victims of the 9·11 attacks who received notice of the plea agreement, and his brother was the fire chief who died in the terrorist attack that year.
"For me, it's shameful that 23 years have passed and these people have not been convicted and punished for their attacks or crimes. I never understood how it took so long. "If you could go back in time and tell the people who just witnessed the collapse of the Twin Towers: 'In 23 years, these criminals who are responsible for the crimes we just witnessed will be given plea agreements, so that they can avoid the death penalty and get life in prison.'" People will be shocked by this. ”
United States Senate Republican Leader Mitch · McConnell similarly condemned the plea deal, accusing the administration of Democratic President Joseph · Biden of being "cowardly in the face of terrorism."
Editor: Yang Chuying
Source: Xinhua News Agency