Almost 23 years after the atrocities which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania on September 11th, 2001, the man accused of plotting the attacks, along with two of his accomplices, agreed last month to plead guilty to conspiracy and murder charges in exchange for a life sentence rather than facing a military trial with the prospect of being sentenced to death. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, who have been held at the extraterritorial military facility at Guantánamo Bay for almost two decades, consented to the deal with military prosecutors and Pentagon officials.
Many would find the deal unsatisfactory. Relatives who lost loved ones on 9/11 were unhappy that the men would not face full court proceedings to establish the events that led to their deaths, although there was an agreement to answer questions from victims’ families. Others were angry that the death penalty would not be applied. And international observers questioned the validity of any legal process which left suspects in detention without trial for so long.
All that is now academic. US defence secretary Lloyd Austin surprised both prosecution and defence last week by announcing the deal was off.
It is unclear what happens now. Any prospect of a fair trial for these men disappeared years ago. They had been tortured in secret CIA prisons for three years until their transfer to Guantánamo. There, according to UN rights investigator Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, they were subject to further torture and mistreatment. Any material derived from these interrogations was inadmissible.
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Of the hundreds held in Guantánamo since 2001, only 18 have been charged with a crime. Successive US administrations have struggled to deal with the aftermath of a failed policy that breached basic principles of human rights and natural justice while also betraying the interests of victims of terrorism. It is now 15 years since then-US president Barack Obama promised to close Guantánamo. And yet, inexplicably and inexcusably, it remains open.