Five men charged in the September 11 terror attacks, including alleged "mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are in plea negotiations to resolve the longstanding capital case, defence lawyers have confirmed.
Lawyers for the five men, each held for more than 15 years at the United States naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have entered into talks with prosecutors in the high-security military court "over proposed dispositions of the case", said lawyers for one defendant, Ammar al Baluchi.
"I can confirm that plea negotiations are ongoing and that the scheduled hearing this month was cancelled for that reason," said one of those lawyers, Alka Pradhan.
"Negotiated agreements represent one path to ending military commissions, stopping indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay, and providing justice," she said.
The five men have been embroiled in pre-trial hearings for a decade, much of the jousting focused on whether they can be tried fairly after allegedly having undergone interrogations at the hands of the CIA in the years after the 2001 attacks.
After an 18-month delay because of the COVID-19 pandemic, late last year prosecutors said they hoped to open the formal trial this year.
But others in Guantánamo expressed doubts at that, and the move to discuss a plea deal could reflect the lack of a clear horizon for starting and completing a formal trial.
Last year some followers of the case said that the defendants could conceivably agree to plead guilty if the death penalty was taken off the table and, after sentencing, they remain imprisoned in Guantánamo rather than be transferred to a "supermax" penitentiary inside the US.
But families of the nearly 3,000 people who died at the hands of the attacks have strongly supported having the men executed, and the issue remains deeply emotional, as well as politically charged.
The five men include Mohammed, who has admitted to being deeply involved in planning and executing the plot, along with al-Baluchi, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.
