Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism – Claiming they’ve been “thwarted by our own government” in pursuit of information, they want to nix a potential plea deal with suspected masterminds.
More than 2,000 family members of people who died in the Sept. 11 terror attacks have signed a letter to President Joe Biden protesting a potential plea agreement between the government and five suspected masterminds held at Guantanamo Bay.
The possible agreement, which some victims’ families were notified about in a letter last week, only compounds their pain surrounding the approaching 9/11 anniversary — and their frustration at the U.S. government for continuing to withhold information about the Saudi government’s links to the attackers, despite repeated promises of transparency.
Brett Eagleson, who lost his father in the attack on the World Trade Center, now leads 9/11 Justice, an advocacy group for victims’ families that has sued the Saudi government and is seeking additional information about how the kingdom assisted the hijackers. His main problem with a plea deal for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the most infamous of the purported masterminds behind the attack, isn’t that Mohammed would avoid the death penalty.
“This issue of life versus death is a distraction,” Eagleson said in an interview. “A plea deal avoids a trial, a plea deal avoids a public reckoning, and that’s the important issue.”
“We cannot have the greatest terrorist attack in the history of this country fade away with plea deals for the last remaining prisoners in Guantanamo,” Eagleson added. “America deserves a trial. We deserve to know what they have to say and we deserve the truth.”
“We ask that you prioritize the interests of the victims of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks over those of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or other terrorists,” they write in their letter. “That you not bow to the demands of any embarrassed government officials willing to sacrifice transparency in favor of reputation; and that you continue to support us in our search for truth and justice.”
