Families of 9/11 victims’ two-decade wait for justice goes on as Biden blocks plea deal for accused mastermind
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The highly-divisive plea deal has been blocked again. The Biden administration succeeded Thursday in temporarily blocking accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from entering a guilty plea in a deal that would spare him the risk of execution for al-Qaida's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
![[Defense Secretary has long opposed the deals, believing the decision on the death penalty should only be made by someone holding his office.]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/09/11/2025-01-09T113537Z_329940815_RC2B6CAPCAQ9_RTRMADP_3_UKRAINE-CRISIS-USA.jpg)
A three-judge appeals panel agreed to put on hold Mohammed's guilty plea scheduled for Friday in a military commission courtroom at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In an unusual move, the Biden administration is pushing to throw out a plea agreement that its own Defense Department had negotiated with Mohammed and two 9/11 co-defendants.
![[Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, pictured shortly after his capture, was tortured by CIA agents, along with his co-defendants.]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/07/31/23/Guantanamo_Sept_11_32776.jpg)
Mohammed is accused of developing and directing the plot to crash hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another of the hijacked planes flew into a field in Pennsylvania. A small number of relatives of some of the nearly 3,000 victims already had gathered in Guantanamo to hear Mohammed take responsibility in one of the most painful chapters in American history.
"It's very upsetting," said Elizabeth Miller, who lost her firefighter father, Douglas Miller, in the attacks and leads a group of 9/11 families supporting the plea agreements and opposing execution for the defendants. She sees the deals as "the best way for families to receive finality.".
"It's unfortunate that the larger government isn't recognizing it," she said by phone Thursday from Guantanamo. But Gordon Haberman, whose daughter, Andrea, was killed at the World Trade Center while on a business trip, took heart. "If this leads to a full trial for these guys, then I'm in favor of that," he said.
