Terrorist Attack of September 11, 2001 in the USA: Defendants Agreed to Plead Guilty.

Three Suspects in the September 11 Attack Plead Guilty

Three men who were suspects in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack in New York have pleaded guilty. They will avoid the death penalty. This was reported by the US Department of Defense.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi made a deal with the investigation. They and two other suspects, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, were jointly charged and appeared before the court on June 5, 2008.

They were also re-indicted in May 2012 and appeared before the court again.

According to The New York Times, all three have been in custody since 2003. Mohammed, a militant from the Al-Qaeda organization, is accused by the USA of organizing the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"In exchange for the abolition of the death penalty as a possible punishment, the three defendants agreed to plead guilty to all the crimes charged, including the murder of 2,976 people listed in the indictment," said Chief Prosecutor Rear Admiral Aaron Rugh.

According to the message, the men may submit their pleas in open court as early as next week.

Mohammed, an engineer who was educated in the USA and a proponent of jihad, is accused of being the mastermind behind the idea of hijacking planes and attacking buildings. He presented this idea to Osama bin Laden as early as 1996 and assisted in training the perpetrators.

Mohammed and Hawsawi were arrested in Pakistan in March 2003 and held in secret CIA prisons until their transfer to the US naval base in Guantanamo in September 2006. They were held in confinement for a long Time without contact with the outside world and subjected to torture, including the use of "waterboarding" - a form of torture in which a cloth covering the prisoner's face and airways is saturated with water, creating the sensation of drowning.

Let us recall that the US service previously released unpublished photos from the sites of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

US President Joe Biden, at the request of the victims' relatives, signed an order to declassify all documents related to the investigation of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York.