Three 9/11 suspects agree to plead guilty

The man accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, and two of his accomplices, held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have agreed to plead guilty, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.The Pentagon did not elaborate.A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the plea deals almost certainly involved guilty pleas in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table.The official said the terms of the agreement had not been publicly disclosed but acknowledged a plea for a life sentence was possible.Mohammed is the most well-known inmate at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, which was set up in 2002 by then-US president George W Bush to house foreign militant suspects following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.Its population grew to a peak of about 800 inmates before it started to shrink. There are 30 inmates today.Mohamed is accused of masterminding the plot to fly hijacked commercial passenger aircraft into the World Trade Centre in New York City and into the Pentagon.The 9/11 attacks, as they’re known, killed nearly 3,000 people and plunged the United States into what would become a two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.Plea deals were also reached by two other detainees: Walid Mohamed Salih Mubarak bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi, according to a Pentagon statement.The three men were initially charged jointly and arraigned on June 5, 2008, and then were again charged jointly and arraigned a second time on May 5, 2012, the Pentagon statement said.