Guantanamo detainees agree to plead guilty to 9/11 charges
Three Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks in the US, and who were previously tortured at CIA black sites, have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and murder charges, the US Department of Defense said on Wednesday.
The three men, who include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks in which 2,976 people were killed, agreed to the plea deal in return for assurances from prosecutors that they would not face the death penalty, according to a letter sent by US military prosecutors to families of 9/11 victims.
The plea deal appears to offer the prospect of a resolution to legal proceedings that have been mired for years in pre-trial arguments over whether evidence obtained from the defendants through torture was admissible in court.
In the letter, seen by Middle East Eye, prosecutors said the three men, who have been detained at Guantanamo Bay since 2006, could enter guilty pleas as soon as next week.
“The decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement… 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,” they wrote.
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Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer who has represented detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, told MEE that the deal would bring the US “one step closer to closure on both a very tragic moment in US history and a terrible and barbaric response to it.
“A major motivator in the plea agreement is that it is seen as a quid pro quo for the fact that people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were tortured in unspeakable ways,” said Stafford Smith.
Waterboarded 183 times
Mohammed, a 59-year-old Pakistani national, was captured in Rawalpindi in 2003 and then held in CIA secret detention facilities in Afghanistan and Poland, where he was waterboarded 183 times and subjected to other forms of torture and abuse, before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
His co-defendants who have also agreed plea deals are Walid Bin Attash, a 46-year-old Yemeni citizen, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, a 55-year-old Saudi national.
Attash is alleged to have trained some of the hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks, in which airliners were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC, and another plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
Hawsawi is alleged to have been a financial facilitator of the plot. Both Attash and Hawsawi were captured in Pakistan in 2003 and then held at CIA black sites and Guantanamo Bay.
Earlier this year a court in Lithuania ordered the country’s government to pay compensation to Hawsawi, ruling that officials should have known he would be subjected to ill treatment at a CIA detention facility in the Baltic state.
A 2014 report by the Senate’s intelligence committee on the CIA’s torture programme found that Hawsawi had been among detainees subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques, despite doubts and questions surrounding their knowledge of terrorist threats and the location of senior al-Qaeda leadership”.
The report said Hawsawi had been subjected to rectal examinations conducted with such “excessive force” that he was left with severe injuries and ongoing health issues.
Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee and the outreach director for Cage International, told MEE: “It’s taken more than two decades for some semblance of justice to come for the victims of 9/11, but also the victims of the United States of America, which is those who were held in Guantanamo.
“Guantanamo was set up in order primarily to hold to account those responsible for 9/11 but also to protect America, and they have failed in both regards.”
Families still seeking answers
As part of the plea deal, prosecutors said the three men had also agreed to answer questions submitted by the families of 9/11 victims “regarding their roles and reasons for conducting the September 11 attacks”.
But the plea deal was criticised by a number of groups representing survivors and families of victims of the attack, who have accused Saudi Arabia of involvement in 9/11.
“We urge the administration to ensure that these deals do not close the door on obtaining critical information that can shed light on Saudi Arabia’s role in the 9/11 attacks. Our quest for justice will not waver until the full truth is revealed, and justice is served for the victims and their families,” said Brett Eagleson, the president of 9/11 Justice, in a statement reported by CNN.
'Here we are, 23 years later, and there has not been one meaningful trial of anyone involved in 9/11, and there won't be'
– Clive Stafford Smith, lawyer
Earlier on Wednesday, lawyers for Saudi Arabia asked a court in Manhattan to dismiss a case in which families of the victims accuse Saudi officials in the US of providing support to some of the 9/11 hijackers. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. The kingdom has denied any involvement in the attacks.
Two more Guantanamo detainees have also faced charges over the attacks. Last year a military judge ruled that Ramzi bin al Shibh, a 52-year-old Yemeni national held at Guantanamo Bay, was mentally unfit to stand trial after his lawyers had argued he had been driven “insane” by CIA torture and interrogation methods.
Lawyers for the fifth man accused, Ammar al-Baluchi, a 46-year-old Kuwaiti national, have argued that his torture by the CIA left him with brain damage, after he was used as a “teaching prop” for trainee interrogators.
The extrajudicial detention of hundreds of men - seized during the invasion of Afghanistan and the so-called “war on terror” that followed the 9/11 attacks - at the US Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba has long been condemned by human rights organisations, with 30 detainees still held there.
It remains unclear where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Attash and Hawsawi will serve what are expected to be life sentences.
Stafford Smith said the offer by prosecutors of plea deals reflected the continuing failings and “hubristic futility” of the Guantanamo system.
“The idea that a bunch of prosecutors could make up a system that radically curtailed due process was a foolish and immoral one," he said, "with the consequence that here we are, 23 years later, and there has not been one meaningful trial of anyone involved in 9/11, and there won't be.”
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