Relatives of victims of the September 11 attacks are outraged after the Pentagon said on Wednesday it had reached plea deals with three suspected terrorists who planned the attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man reported to be the mastermind behind the horrific attacks.
9/11 Justice President Brett Eagleson, who lost his father in the tragic attacks 23 years ago, reacted to the news on “Fox & Friends First,” calling on government officials to get to the bottom of Saudi Arabia’s involvement in facilitating terrorism.
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“It’s absolutely awful and it’s absolutely shocking,” Eagleson told Todd Pirro on Thursday, “and then yesterday I sat in the Southern District Court in Manhattan with over 500 family members, waiting 23 years for a trial in that court, learning the full role that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has played. We finally have access to the documents that the FBI and the Department of Justice have finally shared with us.”
“You can’t take these animals and not have them stand a trial,” Eagleson said. “America was founded on the principles of justice. There needs to be a lawsuit. There needs to be a court hearing. You can’t take these animals and not have them heard.”
Prosecutors have agreed to plea deals with the three ringleaders in the case. September 11 terrorist attacks The Department of Defense (DOD) on Wednesday revealed the names of former prisoners awaiting trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
According to the Defense Department, Susan Eskarie, the military commission’s convening authority, entered into pre-trial agreements with defendants Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Mohammed Saleh Mubarak bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam Al Hawsawi.
Terms of the plea deal have not been disclosed, but the terrorism suspect will avoid the death penalty, three family members of 9/11 victims were told by the Office of Military Commissions (OMC). New York Post report.
But Eagleson argued that revealing how Saudi Arabia supported terrorists was crucial to the families of the 9/11 victims.
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“We want to know what the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia did,” Eagleson said. “We want to know what they did. Listen, all the information that we’ve uncovered tells us that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia played a key role. We now know that there were 30 individuals who assisted Saudi government officials and assisted the 9/11 hijackers. These individuals hold the truth of what really happened on 9/11.”
“It is not as though 19 people with no knowledge of English, no experience of Western culture, no money and no idea how to fly an airplane somehow banded together and, unaided, carried out the most destructive and significant attack in the history of this country,” he continued.
“And it became clear that they had a lot of backing, backing in the form of the Saudi Arabian government.”
The defendants are accused of providing training, funding and other assistance to 19 terrorists who hijacked passenger planes on September 11, 2001, and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
UNDATED: (File photo) Al Qaeda terrorist suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is seen in this photo released by the FBI in Washington, DC, on October 10, 2001. (Photo credit: FBI/Getty Images) (Getty Images)
This attack resulted in: Worst terrorist attack It was the first incident in American history to take place on American soil. The victims’ families were outraged when they heard the news of the deal.
They are scheduled to be sentenced at Guantanamo Bay on August 5.
“I don’t care if they live or die,” Eagleson said. “That’s for God to judge. If they want to rot in a cell, if they want to be martyrs, then maybe rotting in a cell is the answer, but I’m not going to take a position on life or death that I can’t make on my paycheck.”
“I would like to know what these people know about what the Saudi Arabian government did to kill my father,” he continued.
Fox News’ Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
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