US prosecutors have started negotiating a plea deal with Pakistani terrorist and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others currently lodged in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, a move which could result in the commutation of their death sentence to life imprisonment, according to a media report.
The New York Times’ report said that the plea deal would undoubtedly disappoint, if not enrage, death-penalty advocates among the victims’ family members.The unprecedented terror attack on September 11, 2001, destroyed the twin towers of the iconic World Trade Center (WTC) in New York, killing nearly 3,000 people, including many Indians.The report said that other family members, including those troubled by the role of the US torture in the case and the delays, might see it as a fitting conclusion.While no deal is expected soon, guilty pleas resulting in life sentences could force the Biden administration to “modify its ambition of ending detention operations at Guantánamo Bay and instead rebrand it as a military prison for a few men,” it said.
The report cited people with knowledge of the discussions as saying that “prosecutors have opened talks with lawyers” for 58-year-old Shaikh and his four co-defendants to “negotiate a potential plea agreement that would drop the possibility of execution.”The report added that a guilty plea in exchange for life sentences and not execution could bring to an end the case going on for years now at Guantanamo Bay.“Nearly a decade after the men were arraigned, the military judge has set no trial start date,” it said.During the Trump administration, there had been a failed attempt at such talks when the accused plotters had demanded that they serve their sentences at Guantanamo, where they are able to pray and eat in groups.
They did not want to be sent to the supermax prison in Colorado where federal inmates are held in solitary confinement up to 23 hours a day, the report said.“A plea deal would undoubtedly disappoint, if not enrage, death-penalty advocates among the victims’ family members. But other family members, including those troubled by the role of US torture in the case and the delays, might see it as a fitting conclusion,” it said.Following a nearly two-year closure of the court due to the coronavirus pandemic, discussions began last week, the report said.
