The White House said Thursday that President Biden “played no role” in the plea deal process for three of the masterminds behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
“The White House learned yesterday that the Convening Authority for Military Commissions entered into pretrial agreements, negotiated by military prosecutors, with KSM and other 9/11 defendants,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “The President and the White House played no role in this process. The President has directed his team to consult as appropriate with officials and lawyers at the Department of Defense on this matter.”
The statement comes after the Department of Defense announced Wednesday that prosecutors had reached a plea agreement with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two others, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, for their role in masterminding the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
President Biden (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The agreement would help bring a close to a yearslong process, with the case being stuck in pretrial proceedings in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, with no trial in sight over concerns about the admissibility of evidence that was obtained through the CIA’s enhanced interrogation of the three defendants, which critics have denounced as torture.
The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but family members of 9/11 victims were told by the Office of Military Commissions that the suspects would be spared the death penalty as part of the deal, according to a report from the New York Post.
While Biden did not play a role in the deal that was ultimately reached, the president rejected a proposal last year that would have spared the three suspects from the death penalty.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a photo released by the FBI, Oct. 10, 2001, in Washington, D.C. (Getty Images)
According to a New York Times report outlining the deal, which was rejected by Biden in September, the three suspects proposed a deal that would force the Pentagon to accept a guarantee that they would not serve their sentences in solitary confinement, that they would be allowed to eat and pray with other prisoners, and that they would get civilian-run medical care for conditions they claimed were caused by CIA interrogations.
Meanwhile, some family members of 9/11 victims expressed disappointment in the deal reached by the Defense Department.
“The prosecution and families have waited 23 years to have our day in court to put on the record what these animals did to our loved ones. They took that opportunity away from us,” Jim Smith, whose wife Moira Smith was the only female NYPD officer to die in the attacks, told the New York Post. “They committed the worst crime in the history of our country, they should receive the highest penalty.”
Flowers are placed at the etching of Sneha Anne Philip’s name at the memorial during ceremonies marking the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, in New York, Sept. 11, 2011. (Reuters/Carolyn Cole/Pool )
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“I am very disappointed. We waited patiently for a long time. I wanted the death penalty – the government has failed us,” Daniel D’Allara, whose brother John was an NYPD officer killed in the attacks, told the outlet.