July 31, 2024Updated 6:02 p.m. ET

The man accused of plotting the attacks of Sept. 11 and two of his accomplices have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges in exchange for a life sentence rather than a death-penalty trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prosecutors said Wednesday.

A senior Pentagon official approved the deal for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, according to Defense Department officials with knowledge of the agreement. The men have been in U.S. custody since 2003. But the case had become mired in more than a decade of pretrial proceedings that focused on the question of whether their torture in secret C.I.A. prisons had contaminated the evidence against them.

Word of the deal emerged in a letter from war court prosecutors to family members of victims of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/us/politics/sept-11-guilty-plea.html