IS THIS BIDEN'S THINKING OR IS IT OBAMA'S?

EXCLUSIVE - 9/11 families call Biden administration's deal to spare terrorists the death penalty a 'sickening betrayal'

Families of 2,000 victims have demanded a trial and for the deal to be dropped 

 

By Morgan Phillips

 

Daily Mail

Aug 27, 2023

 

 

Nearly two decades after the nation's most horrific terror attack of all time, the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is still awaiting trial 

 

Furious 9/11 families have urged the Biden administration not to spare the attackers the death penalty and have demanded the release of documents that could finally implicate Saudi Arabia.

Brett Eagleson, who was 15 when he lost his father in the South Tower almost 22 years ago, called the proposed plea deal for the suspects awaiting trial at Guantanamo Bay a 'sickening betrayal.' 

For Eagleson, a plea deal would mean the suspects can avoid trial and avoid revealing answers relatives of the 2,977 Americans killed in the attack have had an agonizing wait to hear. 

'To the 9/11 victims, we've been fighting for 22 years for peace, closure and accountability,' he told DailyMail.com. 'We need to hear what KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) and these other detainees have to say.'

Earlier this month, the Pentagon sent a letter to the families of 9/11 victims explaining that plea deals are being explored for chief architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four of his alleged co-conspirators.

The agreements would see them 'accept criminal responsibility for their actions and plead guilty....in exchange for not receiving the death penalty.' 

This week, a group of 2,000 9/11 family members slammed the plans and wrote a letter to the Biden administration demanding they drop the plea deals. 

 

Brett Eagleson, who was 15 when he lost his father (pictured right with him) in the South Tower almost 22 years ago, called the proposed plea deal for the suspects awaiting trial at Guantanamo Bay a 'sickening betrayal'

For Eagleson, a plea deal would mean the suspects can avoid trial and avoid revealing answers relatives of the 2,977 Americans killed in the attack have had an agonizing wait to hear

 

Guilty pleas in exchange for a life sentence could finally bring to a close the over-two decade-long case, the longest ever at the war court. 

But relatives want answers they have been waiting decades to hear - and believe the proposed deal flies in the face of the long-standing policies that the U.S. doesn't negotiate with terrorists.

'The Pentagon is embarrassed that it's taken them 20 years to try to prosecute terrorists,' explained 9/11 victims' attorney Troy Rosasco. 'They think this is going to be a one-day news cycle, and they're going to be able to sweep it under the rug.'

But guilty pleas that result in life sentences could complicate President Biden's promise to shut down Guantanamo Bay. 

The facility has become more and more secretive over its 20 years of operation, even as it costs taxpayers millions of dollars per year.

'Here we are on the eve of the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, and we are getting kicked in the gut by our own government once again,' Dennis McGinley, whose brother Daniel McGinley died while working on the 89th floor on 9/11, told DailyMail.com of the potential plea deals.

 

Photo posted on the website www.muslm.net on September 3, 2009 shows Al-Qaeda's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged organizer of the September 11, 2001 attacks, at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp

Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin 'Attash (left) is accused of training the hijackers to fight, while Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, now 53, from Saudi Arabia, is accused of giving financial backing to the group

 

'US policy should always be - and I thought it was - that we don't negotiate with terrorists,' added Rosasco. 

In 2021, President Biden issued an executive order requiring government agencies - CIA, FBI and Justice Department, to release a trove of documents to the public that would shed more light on how the attack happened.

That move declassified more than 900 pages of documents - reversing a move by Trump-era Attorney General Bill Barr that invoked the state secrets privilege that suppressed information that may have pointed to Saudi involvement in the attack. 

However, the government refused to comply with Biden's order and released only a few sanitized summaries of the information, the 9/11 families say.

The reason they won't release the documents is the same as why they don't want to have a trial, according to family members. 

'They are terrified of what KSM and these other detainees will say about not only the Saudi role in 9/11, but about what the United States intelligence agencies knew. And they don't want information to see the light of day,' Eagleson, founder of 9/11 Justice said. 

'The same DOJ and FBI that has been blocking the 9/11 families from receiving all of the 9/11 evidence are now sending us letters telling us that there most likely won’t be a trial for [Mohammed] preventing that same evidence from ever being made public - all to cover up for Saudi Arabia and U.S. government's embarrassment,' said McGinley in agreement. 

Further complicating matters is President Biden is reportedly considering a meeting with Crown-Prince Mohammed Bin Salman next month at the G-20 conference in India. The pair could discuss a Saudi-Israel deal to normalize relations -  which would be a huge get for the U.S. president. 

'Long ago the U.S. made a political decision not to embarrass the Saudis,' said Eagleson. 'But we are asking that the 9/11 families be included in any deal: we want an apology we want an admission of guilt, we want closure.'

The Saudi government has always denied being involved in the attacks, and has sought to move beyond the matter as bin Salman tries to modernize and deepen ties with the West. 

In 2000, then-Saudi graduate student Omar al-Bayoumi, 42 at the time, claimed he had met the first two 9/11 hijackers by chance at a restaurant and decided to be hospitable and take them under his wing. 

He drove them to their flying lessons, secured bank accounts and a lease on a property for them. 

Both the FBI and the 9/11 commission initially backed up al-Bayoumi's account that he was unaware of their intent to kill people in their country upon meeting them. 

But last year, the FBI released fresh documents affirming that a-Bayoumi was an agent with the Saudi intelligence service who worked with Saudi religious officials and even reported to the Saudi ambassador in Washington. 

The two hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were known to both the Saudi intelligence service and the CIA as al-Qaeda operatives. The CIA had tracked them from a meeting in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, but the agency said it lost track of them as they flew from Bangkok and then on to Los Angeles in 2000.

The CIA did not alert the FBI that two terrorists had entered the country for more than a year - in August 2001 - just one month before the fateful attack. 

Families of 9/11 victims say there is an entire trove of documents that could be released to establish an even stronger connection between the Saudi kingdom and the 9/11 attackers.  

'By refusing to give us the documents is accomplishing two things. They're there, they're protecting the kingdom from embarrassment, but they're also protecting our own intelligence failures,' said Eagleson. 

'They buy billions of dollars of U.S.-manufactured weapons, they stabilize global oil markets. So there's not a lot of people or there's not a lot of big willingness to try to push them around much.' 

 

The Tribute in Light will dominate the Manhattan skyline next month when the U.S. marks 22 years since the deadliest attack on the nation's soil

 

Five al-Qaeda terrorists are accused of hijacking four airplanes and carrying out the coordinated attacks across the US that led to the death of 2,977 plus thousands more who have died in subsequent years from breathing in toxic particles that were released in the rubble of the attacks.

The case against the five men has been bogged down in pre-trial proceedings due to the CIA's use of torture to extract evidence from the defendants and to Covid-19 delays. 

Nearly a decade after the men's arraignment, the military judge has yet to set a trial start date. U.S. taxpayers have spent over an estimated $161.5 million housing 9/11 mastermind KSM alone.