

The man accused of being the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks and his two co-defendants have agreed to plead guilty, say US officials.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi are expected to enter the pleas at the military commission at Guantanamo Bay as soon as next week.
According to the New York Times, the three defendants have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges in exchange for a life sentence instead of facing a death penalty trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 attack which saw suicide attackers hijacking planes and flying them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon HQ in Washington and crashing one in a Pennsylvania field.
It was reported in August last year the suspected main conspirator of the worst terror attack in American history and his fellow defendants would maybe manage to escape the death penalty due to plea agreements being considered at the time.
It has taken decades for families of the victims to get closure as the prosecution of the defendants has been repeatedly disrupted, especially due to legal reasons over their interrogation under torture while in CIA custody.
As a result of the delays, it has taken more than a decade to reach a verdict, as families of the September 2001 attack victims wait for a decision.
It was Mohammed who presented the idea of such an attack on the US to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the United States’ 9/11 Commission concluded.
The investigation also found Mohammed received authorisation from bin Laden to mastermind the 9/11 attacks, while the four other men are alleged to have supported the hijackers in various ways.
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