Plea Deals on the Table for Guantánamo 9/11 Detainees

Court dysfunction at Guantánamo led to two decades of gridlock and plea deals increasingly appear to be an inevitable and sensible resolution.

Plea Deals on the Table for Guantánamo 9/11 Detainees

The U.S. government is considering plea deals for the five men charged with the 9/11 terrorist attack, arguing that they may never face a jury and engaging in settlement talks at the U.S. military court in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that would allow alleged 9/11 architect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants to plead guilty, avoid the death penalty, and serve life in prison, reports NPR.

They are charged with helping arrange or finance the hijacking of the four airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, and many victims’ family members — including people whose relatives were sickened and later died from the toxic fallout of the World Trade Center collapse — want the five men executed. However, court dysfunction led to two decades of gridlock and plea deals increasingly appear to be an inevitable and sensible resolution when faced with the realities of trial hearings that, even if they yield convictions, could result in years of appeals. The settlement talks underway would require numerous details to be worked out; including whether all the men would receive life sentences and arguments from defendants who say they should receive lesser sentences because they played much lesser roles in the attacks, spent about 20 years in prison, and were tortured in custody.