A doable plea take care of 5 remaining al-Qaeda terrorists locked up in Guantanamo Bay has some within the 9/11 neighborhood reeling simply because the anniversary of the fear assault marked its twenty first yr.
“This is not justice for the 3,000 people who died that day and the many more who have since. This is a joke,” mentioned Debra Burlingame, whose brother was one of many pilots killed on 9/11.
Burlingame, who’s an legal professional, has realized that the Biden administration might be negotiating potential plea offers to take away the demise penalty in opposition to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 4 different alleged accomplices.
Other studies again up her fears of life as an alternative of capital punishment for the killers.
“Do they want to trade Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? I intend to fight this with everything I have,” she advised the Herald Monday.
Burlingame’s brother was one of many pilots killed on Flight 77 that the terrorists slammed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, killing 64 folks on the aircraft and 125 on the bottom.
Eighteen months later, Mohammed was captured in his hideout in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He was al-Qaeda’s #3 chief on the time.
His day in courtroom — a army tribunal on Gitmo — has been stricken by countless delays after which the pandemic. Pretrial hearings scheduled for early fall have now been canceled.
Now information of a doable plea deal is swirling.
“It’s disgusting,” mentioned Brian Sullivan, a now-retired Federal Aviation Administration official based mostly in Boston who warned of a terror assault at Logan months earlier than it occurred.
“It’s a slap in the face to victims’ families. This is the architect of their loved ones’ death we’re talking about,” he added. “It’s just outrageous.”
James Connell, an legal professional for considered one of Mohammed’s co-defendants — one accused of transferring cash to 9/11 attackers — confirmed studies either side are nonetheless “attempting to reach a pretrial agreement” that would nonetheless keep away from a trial and end in lesser however nonetheless prolonged sentences, the Associated Press is reporting.
The Gitmo detainees performed pivotal roles within the 9/11 assaults that allowed 19 terrorists (15 of them Saudi nationals) to slam Flights 11 and 175 — out of Logan International Airport in Boston — Flight 77 out of Dulles International Airport close to Washington and Flight 93 out of Newark International Airport into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a discipline in Shanksville, Pa., when heroes on that jet mentioned: “Let’s Roll.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”