Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) has been in U.S. custody since March 1, 2003, when he was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan during a joint CIA-Pakistani intelligence operation. Along with four other high-ranking al-Qaeda leaders identified as planners for the 9/11 terrorist attack, KSM has languished at the prison camp in Guantanamo, Cuba since 2006 after spending several years being interrogated by the CIA and FBI.
It was during those interrogations that KSM was allegedly waterboarded and was subject to other “enhanced interrogation” techniques that led to delay after delay in the military tribunal proceedings.
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During the Trump administration, prosecutors tried to work out a plea deal that would have sent the plotters to a supermax prison in Florence, Colo. with life sentences. Those negotiations fell through when the prisoners demanded they serve their life sentences in Guantanamo, which is far less restrictive.
Now the Biden administration is trying once again to settle the legal situation for KSM and the other plotters and has opened negotiations that would give the terrorists life sentences.
A plea deal would undoubtedly disappoint, if not enrage, death-penalty advocates among the victims’ family members. But other family members, including those troubled by the role of U.S. torture in the case and the delays, might see it as a fitting conclusion.
The path to a trial for the accused plotters of the worst terrorist attack in the United States has been impeded by legal and logistic challenges as well as a nearly two-year closure of the court during the coronavirus pandemic.
Even with successful negotiations, any deal would have to secure the Pentagon’s approval.
Although the prosecutors have begun the negotiations, a senior Pentagon official known as the convening authority must approve any deal. That role is currently held by Col. Jeffrey D. Wood of the Arkansas National Guard, who is also a lawyer in Little Rock, Ark., and was appointed to the civilian job by the Trump administration. Participants said the talks were expected to continue through the month to try to reaching some understandings to present to Colonel Wood.
Even the suggestion of a deal during the Trump administration enraged then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who complained to Defense Secretary James N. Mattis about the convening authority, Harvey Rishikof. Shortly after that, Rishikof was fired.
There have also been suggestions of transferring some prisoners charged with lesser crimes to third countries and reducing the sentences of others who were unaware of the 9/11 plot. The goal — as stated first by Barack Obama and then Joe Biden — is to close the prison camp at Guantanamo and try the remaining inmates in civil court. When Obama tried this in 2010, the backlash was so severe he had to drop it.
President George Bush made a mistake in building the prison camp at Guantanamo. But if we’re not going to execute the terrorists who plotted to murder nearly 3,000 American citizens — and the fact that we haven’t is a blot on American justice — they should be locked away and forgotten.
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