The White House announced Thursday that President Biden has “no involvement” in the plea bargaining process for the three masterminds of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“The White House learned yesterday that the Military Commission Convening Agency, negotiated by military prosecutors, has entered into pretrial agreements with KSM and other 9/11 defendants,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “The President and the White House have no involvement in this process. The President has directed his team to consult with Department of Defense officials and attorneys on this matter as appropriate.”
The statement came after the Pentagon announced on Wednesday that prosecutors had reached plea deals with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two others, Walid Mohammed Saleh Mubarak bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi, for their roles as masterminds of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
9/11 mastermind and two others reach plea deal while awaiting trial, leaving victims’ families “deeply disappointed”
President Biden (Drew Ungerer/Getty Images)
The agreement would bring to an end years of deliberations in the case, which has been stalled in pretrial proceedings in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with prospects for a trial unclear over concerns about the admissibility of evidence obtained through CIA enhanced interrogation that critics denounce as torture.
Terms of the agreement have not been disclosed, but the New York Post reported that families of 9/11 victims have been told by the Military Commissions Office that the suspects will avoid the death penalty as part of the agreement.
Biden was not involved in the agreement that was ultimately reached, but the president last year rejected a proposal to spare the three suspects from the death penalty.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a photo released by the FBI on October 10, 2001 in Washington, DC (Getty Images)
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According to a New York Times report outlining the deal that Biden rejected in September, the three suspects offered a deal that would have forced the Pentagon to accept guarantees that they would not serve their sentences in solitary confinement, would be allowed to eat and pray with other prisoners and would receive privately run medical care for symptoms they say were caused by CIA interrogation.
Meanwhile, some family members of 9/11 victims expressed disappointment with the Pentagon’s agreement.
“Prosecutors and the families have waited 23 years to have a courtroom to document what these animals did to our loved ones, and they have robbed us of that opportunity,” Jim Smith, wife of Moira Smith, the only female NYPD officer killed in the attack, told the New York Post. “They committed the worst crime in the history of our country and deserve the harshest punishment.”
Flowers are laid at the inscription in front of Sneha Ann Phillips’ name on the memorial during the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, September 11, 2011. (REUTERS/Carolyn Cole/Pool)
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“I am very disappointed. We have waited patiently for a long time. I wanted the death penalty. The government has let us down,” Daniel Dallara, whose brother John, an NYPD officer who was killed in the attack, told the outlet.
