9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed agrees to plea deal to avoid Guantánamo Bay death penalty trial

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man who planned the September 11 terror attacks in 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people, has accepted a plea deal for a life sentence, according to prosecutors.

Mohammed, along with two accomplices, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, will avoid the death penalty as part of the agreement to end the conspiracy case against them, according to The New York Times , which reported on the deal.

News of the plea came in a letter from military prosecutors to family members of those who died in the attacks.

“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,” the letter reads, according to the paper.

Some of those who were impacted by 9/11 disapproved of the deal.

“I am very disappointed. We waited patiently for a long time. I wanted the death penalty — the government has failed us,” Daniel D’Allara, whose brother, NYPD officer John D’Allara, was killed on 9/11, told The New York Post .

The Office of Military Commissions (OMC) told the Post the terms of the agreement were not immediately available, and that the pleas will be officially announced on Thursday, with sentencing set to take place on August 5.

The three men have been in US custody since 2003, first held in secret CIA prisons, then transferred to Gitmo in 2006.

The conspiracy case against them has been in pretrial proceedings for more than a decade. Defense lawyers argued that the government’s repeated use of torture in their detention — Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times — contaminated the evidence that would be part of the case against the attackers.

Amnesty International praised officials for securing a form of “accountability” in the attacks, but condemned the glacial pace of the case against the attackers and called on the US to shut down the military prison. Guantánamo has long been criticized for the use of torture on detainees and the fact that many of those detained there have been in custody for years without formally being charged with crimes.

“Finally, after more than 20 years, there will be some accountability for the 9/11 attacks, and justice for the victims and survivors of those horrific crimes,” Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security with Human Rights program at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement. “We are also pleased that there is finally an outcome for at least some of the accused, who were tortured and then languished in detention without trial for more than two decades.”

Last year, Joe Biden rejected parts of a potential plea deal for the detainees, over demands the men be spared solitary confinement and receive trauma care for their torture at the hands of the CIA, the National Security Council said at the time.