The US has reached a plea deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others accused of the 9/11 attacks, but the camp will persist
There is no neat exit point from grief. Each anniversary, each life event, each addition to or loss from the family, can bring renewed pain to the bereaved. For relatives of the almost 3,000 killed in the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, that suffering has been compounded by the lack of accountability for their deaths.
This week, the US announced that it had reached a plea deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, described as the attack’s architect, and two accomplices, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi. They will avoid the death penalty, instead receiving life sentences in exchange for pleading guilty to all the offences with which they were charged. Negotiations continue with two more men. All have been in US custody since 2002, and are held at Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba. For many relatives, there is anger that there will be no trial, and in some cases that the men will not be executed. But for others there is some relief that after 23 years there is a kind of conclusion to the case, however partial and unsatisfactory.
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