USA | Death penalty could be off table for 9/11 terrorists as Biden admin reportedly negotiates plea deals

The federal government is reportedly negotiating plea deals that could take the death penalty off the table for the five defendants charged with planning and executing the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, according to an exclusive CBS News report.

The men are still being held at Guantanamo Bay and have yet to face trial for the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans. Mohammed and the four other defendants have been charged with terrorism, hijacking, and 2,976 counts of murder for the role they played in the 9/11 attacks. Prosecutors initially sought the death penalty for all five men.

The defendants, who were charged in 2008, have yet to face justice, due, in part, to delays stemming from their lawyers’ efforts to get information from the CIA about enhanced interrogation techniques, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.

News of the possible plea deals has angered family members of some of the victims.

“The families are outraged,” Debra Burlingame told CBS upon learning about the negotiations. Burlingame’s brother, pilot Charles Burlingame, was killed when al Qaeda terrorists hijacked his plane, American Airlines Flight 77, and flew it into the Pentagon. Debra Burlingame said that she has been in contact with family members of other 9/11 victims.

“They don’t want closure, they want justice,” she said of the families.

Attorneys for the defendants reportedly said they are willing to enter guilty pleas in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, as well as for getting treatment for alleged torture they experienced while in CIA custody.

The CIA held each of the defendants for interrogation prior to their being sent to Guantanamo in 2006. Critics have accused the CIA of committing illegal torture against the detainees in their efforts to obtain information.

James Connell, a lawyer representing al-Baluchi, said the federal government “failed all of us after Sept. 11 in their decisions to use illegal techniques and illegal programs.”

“In doing so, it rather corrupted all the legal processes,” he continued.

Human rights attorney Alka Pradhan, a member of al-Baluchi’s legal team, said his client suffered “lasting brain damage” from interrogators whom he alleges “bashed” al-Baluchi’s head against a wall “repeatedly” during interrogation sessions.

One group of victims’ family members have spoken out against what they believe to be the inhumane treatment of the defendants. 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows has said that a guilty plea and agreement not to appeal the sentence “would be partly in recognition of the torture each of the defendants experienced” and bring “some measure of judicial finality.”

A spokesperson for the military trials declined to provide details of the case to CBS News but did confirm that “the parties are currently engaged in preliminary plea negotiations.”

Fox News reported that all five men have been provided with a civilian lawyer, a human rights lawyer, and a military lawyer. Seven different judges have been involved in the cases so far.

Burlingame said that she and other victims’ family members will be denied justice if the death penalty is removed in the cases.

“I will not have closure as long as there is any possibility for some future president to commute their sentences or trade them away for something political that they want from some other country. That’s a very real possibility because it’s now been done over and over and over again,” she said, adding that she fears that “we’ve reached a point in our country where we just don’t seem to have … the courage of our convictions.”

Source: fism.tv, Staff, September 13, 2022

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

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