The man accused of planning the attacks September 11, 2001 in the United States and two of his accomplices have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges in exchange for a life sentence instead of a trial that could carry the death penalty at Guantanamo Bay, according to ‘The New York Times’.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi They have been in US custody since 2003 in a case that has been delayed for more than a decade by pre-trial proceedings involving torture in secret CIA prisons and possible links to contamination of evidence against the defendants.

“In exchange for the elimination of the death penalty as a possible punishment, these three defendantshave agreed to plead guilty to all the crimes chargedincluding the murder of the 2,976 people named in the charge sheet,” reads a letter from the prosecutors of the war tribunal to the relatives of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, according to the cited media.

The plea avoids a trial that was expected to last between 12 and 18 months. Mohammed, an engineer trained in the United States, was accused of having the idea of hijack planes and crash them into buildings. Prosecutors proved that It was he who proposed the idea to Osama bin Laden. in 1996, helping and directing some of the kidnappers.

Mohammed and Hawsawi were captured together in Pakistan in March 2003 and held in secret CIA prisons until their transfer to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006 for an eventual trial. During that time, interrogators held them incommunicado for years, with torture including 183 rounds of waterboarding to Mohammed.

Two of the five accused of planning the attacks were not part of the agreement. Ramzi bin al-Shibh was declared incompetent to stand trial due to mental illness, while Ammar al-Baluchi He was not part of the plea agreement and could be tried alone.