Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the terrorist considered responsible for planning the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., will receive a formal life sentence in jail as part of a plea deal with military prosecutors. Joining him will be Al Quada cronies Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi. All have been held for years at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba without trial.
Details of the deal have not been announced, but US news outlets say the men will plead guilty in exchange for the prosecution agreeing not to seek the death penalty. …
Nearly 3,000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania were killed in the attacks, which sparked the "War on Terror" and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Brett Eagleson, the president of 9/11 Justice, an organisation that represents 9/11 survivors and relatives of victims, said in a statement provided to the BBC that the families are "deeply troubled by these plea deals".
The plea deals seem reasonable because prosecution would be complex, expensive and prone to derailment because he was tortured. He's never getting out anyway, and it might be decades before an execution could take place even if a death sentence was secured. But the deal was accomplished without any transparency or courtesy to survivors and the families of their victims, resulting in the disgusted reception reported by the BBC.
