9/11 alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 2 others reach plea deal

Three of the five 9/11 defendants at Guantanamo Bay -- including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- have reached a plea agreement with prosecutors, the Department of Defense announced Wednesday.

Gary B. Sowards, the lead attorney Mohammed, confirmed to ABC News on Wednesday evening that the agreement does not include the death penalty but means his client will essentially serve life in prison.

The trial of the five 9/11 conspirators had been stuck in legal delays for a very long time. No details about the specific terms and conditions of the pre-trial agreement were made public by the DOD. The other two conspirators who have agreed to the agreement aside from Mohammed are Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.

Patrick White, cousin of Louis Nacke II who was a passenger on United 93 -- the flight where passengers attempted to retake the plane from hijackers, and in the struggle, the aircraft crashed in a field in Pennsylvania -- told ABC News, "I've made my peace with it."

He added that he believes "life in prison along with an admission of guilt that they were complicit in [the] murder of loved ones" was what he was hoping would result from the plea talks.

A White House National Security Council spokesperson told ABC News that the White House learned that the Convening Authority for Military Commissions entered into pretrial agreements with Mohammed and the other two 9/11 defendants on Wednesday.

The spokesperson also said that the president and White House played no role in the process.

Last September, ABC News reported that President Joe Biden rejected a set of demands to form a basis for plea negotiations offered by the five defendants.

Biden agreed with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's recommendation not to accept their demands, known as "joint policy principles," that they wanted prior to entering into plea agreement talks with prosecutors. According to the New York Times, those demands included avoiding solitary confinement and receiving health treatment for injuries the detainees claim were a result of CIA interrogation methods when they were in the CIA’s "black prisons."

"The 9/11 attacks were the single worst assault on the United States since Pearl Harbor," a National Security Council spokesperson told ABC News in a statement in September 2023. "The President does not believe that accepting the joint policy principles as a basis for a pre-trial agreement would be appropriate in these circumstances. The Administration is committed to ensuring that the military commissions process is fair and delivers justice to the victims, survivors, families, and those accused of crimes."

The five detainees were transferred to the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006. Their case has been held up by legal proceedings for years, with no trial date set.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, two hijacked passenger jets flew into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, marking the start of a series of coordinated attacks that day against the United States by the Afghanistan-based terrorist group al-Qaida. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day and thousands more were injured.

-ABC News' Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.