Mar 21, 2022 3 min read

Surviving family members and friends of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have a right to be livid over military prosecutors’ willingness to negotiate plea deals for five 9/11 defendants being detained at the Guantanamo Bay high-security prison in Cuba.

In exchange for guilty pleas, prosecutors reportedly would halt pursuit of death sentences, while also possibly stopping objections to more lenient ongoing punishment for those of the five considered more peripheral to the plot.

Something does not “smell” right in what has begun. In a nation where killers of one person can be executed or sentenced to incarceration without any possibility for parole, it is incredulous that individuals responsible for the deaths of thousands would be considered for even a modicum of leniency or leeway.

Beyond the thousands of deaths, some surviving emergency responders still are dealing with serious health complications stemming from their work amid the rubble of the World Trade Center towers and amid the destruction in the part of the Pentagon struck by one of the planes terrorists hijacked.

Those responders and their families and friends have a right to be deeply troubled over the proposed plea deals as well.

It is not unheard of for some individuals who have committed heinous crimes that did not include snuffing out another person’s life be sentenced to more than a hundred years behind bars, yet some of the five individuals in question might be considered for possible eventual release or the opportunity to serve their sentences in other countries.

Accessories to murder in this country routinely face lengthy punishment; those who helped orchestrate the 2001 atrocities, in whatever capacity, deserve nothing better.

Even if none of the five ever experience capital punishment, for whatever reason, none ever should have the opportunity to live without the threat of that option at some point being inflicted. Of the five defendants, about whom there has been little doubt or debate about their guilt, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the leader of the attacks plotters. He was captured in Pakistan.

“Mohammed and other detainees were allegedly tortured in overseas ‘black site’ interrogation centers and were finally interned … at Guantanamo Bay, where a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between fairness to the accused and deference to the Central Intelligence Agency’s secrets has stymied trials for years,” the Wall Street Journal said.

Last week’s article continues: “The prosecutions remain mired in pretrial hearings that have focused on the degree to which evidence of the defendants’ treatment in CIA custody can be weighed in evaluation of the government’s case and in mitigation of potential punishment.”

Those legal concerns, while relevant in a courtroom, mean virtually nothing – and are more maddening than not – to families victimized by Mohammed and his cohorts now confined at Guantanamo – all of whom attempted unsuccessfully to plead guilty in 2008 in a move rooted in seeking martyrdom.

Many of the people victimized nearly 21 years ago but now feeling sorrow regarding the deaths and destruction being inflicted on Ukraine by Russia, might be harboring the opinion that, like Guantanamo for the five 2001 terrorists, there ought to be some cold, remote place for Russian President Vladimir Putin to face punishment as a war criminal.

No one responsible for so many wrongful deaths should be allowed to escape the punishment due.