Biden Rejects Proposed Conditions for Plea Deals in Sept. 11 Case (original) (raw)

U.S.|Biden Rejects Proposed Conditions for Plea Deals in Sept. 11 Case

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/us/sept-11-trial-plea-biden-guantanamo.html

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Five Guantánamo detainees accused of aiding the attacks wanted a promise of care for torture-related trauma and to avoid solitary confinement.

A side view of President Biden with his hand to his face and his thumb on his lip while seated in the Oval Office.

President Biden accepted a recommendation by the secretary of defense to decline the additional conditions, according to the officials familiar with the matter.Credit...Leigh Vogel for The New York Times

Charlie Savage and Carol Rosenberg

Charlie Savage and Carol Rosenberg have been reporting on the detention operations and legal proceedings at Guantánamo Bay for two decades.

Sept. 6, 2023

President Biden has rejected a list of proposed conditions sought by the five men who are accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in exchange for pleading guilty and receiving a maximum punishment of life in prison, according to two administration officials.

An offer by military prosecutors, made in March 2022, that would spare them death sentences if they admitted to their alleged roles in the hijackings, remains on the table, officials said. But Mr. Biden’s decision to reject additional conditions lessens the likelihood of reaching such a deal.

The case has been bogged down in pretrial proceedings in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for more than a decade, with no trial date set. It has been complicated by the C.I.A.’s torture of the defendants in their first years of custody, which has raised questions about the admissibility of key evidence prosecutors want to use at trial and the risk of any death sentence being overturned on appeal.

The White House was asked to weigh in on a proposed plea agreement about a year and a half ago. In talks with prosecutors, defense lawyers said Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind, and four other defendants wanted certain accommodations, including assurances they would not serve their sentences in solitary confinement and could instead continue to eat and pray communally — as they do now as detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

The prisoners also sought a civilian-run program to treat sleep disorders, brain injuries, gastrointestinal damage or other health problems they attribute to the agency’s brutal interrogation methods during their three to four years in C.I.A. custody before their transfer to Guantánamo Bay in 2006.

An agreement to meet such conditions for the detainees, potentially for the rest of their lives, carried major policy implications likely beyond the authority of a criminal court or a particular team of prosecutors.

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