Three of the men accused of plotting the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US have entered into a pre-trial agreement, the Department of Defense says.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi have been held at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for years without going to trial.
In exchange for the prosecution agreeing not to seek the death penalty, the trio have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet.
The attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania sparked the “War on Terror” and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Brett Eagleson, the president of 9/11 Justice, an organisation that represents 9/11 survivors and relatives of victims, said in a statement provided to the BBC that the families are “deeply troubled by these plea deals”.
He said the process lacked transparency and urged the authorities to pursue more information on the role of Saudi Arabia in the attacks.
Terry Strada, who lost her husband Tom, told the BBC’s Today Programme: “It was a gut-punch to hear that there was a plea deal today that was giving the detainees in Guantanamo Bay what they want.”
Ms Strada, the national chair of the campaign group 9/11 Families United, added: “This is a victory for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and the other two, it’s a victory for them,” she said.
The 9/11 attacks were the deadliest assault on US soil since the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where 2,400 people were killed.
The plea deal was first announced in a letter sent by prosecutors to the families of victims, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.
It said the plea before a military court could come as early as next week. The trio would be sentenced later by a panel of military officers.
In the letter, prosecutors said families may have the opportunity to deliver victim-impact statements during the sentencing hearing, which is expected to take place in the summer of 2025.
Prosecutors also acknowledged the deal was likely to elicit “intense emotion” and “mixed reactions” among the thousands of family members who lost someone.
“The decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement after 12 years of pre-trial litigation was not reached lightly; however, it is our collective, reasoned, and good-faith judgment that this resolution is the best path to finality and justice in this case,” prosecutors wrote in the letter.
In its announcement, the US defence department said “the specific terms and conditions of the pretrial agreements are not available to the public at this time”.
The men have been accused of a litany of charges, including attacking civilians, murder in violation of the laws of war, hijacking and terrorism.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is widely considered the architect of the attack, in which hijackers seized passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington.
A fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.
Mohammed, a US-educated engineer, was captured along with Hawsawi in Pakistan in March 2003.
Prosecutors argued that he brought his idea of hijacking and flying planes into US buildings to al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, and later helped recruit and train some of the hijackers.
He was subjected to a number of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, including waterboarding – simulated drowning – at least 183 times before the practice was banned by the US government.
The trial has been delayed for so long partly because of fears that the so-called brutal interrogation techniques which critics say amounted to torture could have undermined the evidence against the detainees.
“This is the least bad deal in the real world that would ever happen,” national security analyst Peter Bergen told CNN.
In September, the Biden administration reportedly rejected the terms of a plea deal with five men held at the US Navy base in Cuba, including Mohammed.
The men had reportedly sought a guarantee from the president that they would not be kept in solitary confinement and would have access to trauma treatment.
The White House National Security Council said that the president’s office was told on Wednesday of the new deal and had played no role in negotiations.
Fifteen of the 19 plane hijackers were Saudi nationals and families are bringing a lawsuit against the kingdom, which denies any involvement.
Republicans attacked the Biden administration for striking a deal with the accused.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell condemned the move as “a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice”.
“The only thing worse than negotiating with terrorists is negotiating with them after they are in custody,” he said.
