9/11 families urge President Joe Biden to reject plea deal with alleged Al Qaeda operatives

On Monday, more than 2,000 relatives of the victims of the 9/11, 2001, terror attacks appealed to President Joe Biden to reject any plea deal with five alleged Al Qaeda operatives who were involved in the tragedy, including the supposed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM).

According to multiple reports last week, the Pentagon had notified the victims’ families that the five suspects, who have been detained in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba since 2006, are being offered plea bargains.

The family members expressed their anguish in a letter to Biden, saying.

“The pain is all the worse as we learn from the Department of Justice, practically on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary, in a form letter that it is proposing a deal with terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that will prevent a public trial and will continue to keep the information provided to his legal team … secret and hidden.”

The Pentagon letter stated that under the proposed deal, the Gitmo five would “accept criminal responsibility for their actions and plead guilty … in exchange for not receiving the death penalty,” as per CBS News.

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The letter continued, “You are our President and we ask that you prioritize the interests of the victims of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks over those of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or other terrorists; that you not bow to the demands of any embarrassed government officials willing to sacrifice transparency.”

The prosecution of the five has been stalled for years by doubts about the evidence in the case. Specifically, there has been legal ambiguity over whether the government can use information obtained through so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding which critics call torture as evidence in military tribunals.

Officially, 2,977 civilians were killed when four hijacked planes crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., and Shanksville, Pa.

Brett Eagleson, who leads 9/11 Justice, a group that advocates for the families of the victims and supported the letter to Biden, lost his father Bruce in the South Tower that day.

He told The New York Post on Monday, “I think that the most shameful thing about this is that the 9/11 community has been fighting not only Saudi Arabia for accountability, but we’ve been fighting our own government.”

“The US government wants to continue the coverup. They do not want KSM talking and they do not want a public trial, because KSM in effect would spill the beans on everything he knows about the Saudi government involvement in 9/11 and the US intelligence failures,” he added.

The families praised Biden for an executive order he signed early in his administration promising to release more information to the public about about the attacks.

But they argue that the FBI and Justice Department still keep crucial information about Riyadh’s role in aiding the 19 hijackers secret.

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They wrote, “It is our fervent hope you will once again stand up for the victims and immediately demand that your government release the evidence we have tirelessly fought for, which we believe will further reveal the role Saudi agents played in the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks.”

“These agencies are continuing to show their intransigence and they’re not complying with the Biden executive order. And we think if President Biden knew that officials in the FBI and CIA were ignoring his executive order, that he would be outraged,” Eagleson said.

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