Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other Al Qaeda members behind the 9/11 attacks pleaded guilty to 2,976 counts of murder, U.S. military prosecutors revealed in a letter to 9/11 victim families on Wednesday. In exchange, the 9/11 plotters will escape the death penalty. The letter called the plea deal "the best path to finality and justice in this case."
Mohammed and his accomplices were first taken into U.S. custody in 2003. There was little doubt of their guilt; Mohammed admitted to plotting the attacks to a TV reporter a year before his capture. So why was a plea deal in a shadowy military court more than twenty years later the best that the U.S. government could do?
