9/11 mastermind to avoid death penalty

Photo: Sylvie Lanteaume Archives Agence France-Presse The main entrance to the Guantánamo prison, on the site of the US naval military base of the same name, on the island of Cuba, in 2018

France Media Agency in Washington

Posted at 9:14 p.m.

• United States

Pakistani Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks and held at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo, has accepted a plea bargain, the Pentagon announced Wednesday.

The deal allows Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to avoid a trial where he would face the death penalty in exchange for a life sentence, the New York Times reports.

The deal also includes two of the prisoner's co-defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, who have also been held for two decades at Guantanamo, on the island of Cuba.

They are accused of terrorism and murder of nearly 3,000 people in the attacks in New York and Washington.

The men have never been tried, with the process of bringing them to trial having become bogged down by the question of whether the torture they suffered in secret CIA prisons tainted the evidence against them.

In March 2022, the prisoners’ lawyers confirmed that negotiations were underway for a possible plea bargain, rather than a trial before the military tribunal at Guantánamo.

The defendants sought in particular a guarantee that they would remain at Guantánamo, rather than being transferred to a federal penitentiary on the American continent, in solitary confinement.

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Photomontage: FBI Archives via Agence France-Presse This photomontage made available by the FBI shows Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as he appeared on the website of the American agency’s most wanted terrorists.

Self-proclaimed mastermind of the terrorist attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as “KSM” (S for Sheikh in English), boasted to investigators of having imagined and organized the deadliest attacks in history. He has been languishing for 18 years in a cell in the ultra-secure prison at Guantánamo.

He remains, after Osama bin Laden, the most hated figure linked to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

A “killer” who distinguished himself from other members of the jihadist group al-Qaeda by his “deranged” projects, according to former FBI agent Ali Soufan.

“Terrorist entrepreneur”

Most people know the 59-year-old from the photo taken of him the night he was captured in 2003, his hair shaggy and his moustache bushy, wearing white pajamas.

A Pakistani raised in Kuwait, he is said to have suggested the idea of ​​crashing planes to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 1996.

A graduate of an American university, he was working for the Qatari government in the early 1990s when he began planning attacks with his nephew Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in New York in 1993.

While he did not initially Enlisted in al-Qaeda, the official 9/11 report called him a “terrorist entrepreneur” who had the motivations and ideas for attacks but not the funds and organization to carry them out.

“Highly educated and equally at home in a government office or a terrorist hideout, KSM used his imagination, technical and interpersonal skills to design and organize an extraordinary array of terrorist projects,” the report states.

Torture

Captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003, KSM was taken by the CIA to secret prisons in Poland for interrogation. In particular, he was subjected to “waterboarding” (simulated drownings) 183 times in four weeks.

He was the detainee who focused the attention of the entire intelligence agency and who, consequently, was tortured the most: beatings, wall technique, sleep deprivation, rectal rehydration sessions, painful positions.

According to the Senate report, much of the information gathered during these sessions turned out to be false.

But after his transfer to Guantánamo in September 2006, he proudly confessed before the military tribunal: “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z.”

He also said he was behind 30 other operations, including al-Qaeda-linked attacks in Bali and Kenya and the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl.