A year after plea negotiations began, the 9/11 case is still in limbo, frustrating families.

A year ago, there seemed to be a breakthrough in the largest cold case of terrorism in the United States: Settlement talks began for the five people accused of the 9/11 attacks.

The goal was for the defendants, including alleged ringleader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to plead guilty and spend up to life in prison. They would have avoided the death penalty trial, but the harrowing case would finally be over. The 9/11 judge backed these efforts by canceling all public hearings in the past 12 months so lawyers can focus on negotiations.

However, negotiations are in limbo. And yet, family members of 9/11 victims who have waited more than two decades for the case to go to trial are in a familiar state of frustration.

“I would like this problem to be solved in my lifetime,” Adele Welty, 65, said when her son, a New York firefighter, answered a call on September 11, 2001 that a plane had crashed into the World Trade center. and never returned home. Welty is now 86 years old.

“I don’t see the need for revenge in this,” Welty said, “but there must be responsibility.”

Settlement talks at a U.S. military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba stalled until the Biden administration resolves several key issues, including where inmates will serve their sentences and what medical care they will receive if injured from torture .

These “political principles” apply to decision makers in the White House and several government agencies, including the Departments of Defense and Justice, the CIA, and the National Security Council.

However, “there is no reason, after more than a decade, that these questions cannot and should not be answered by senior officials in the administration,” said Scott Rehm, director of the Center’s Washington office. for victims of torture.

“The ball is on the side of the administration,” he added. “These are not easy questions, but they certainly can be answered in a much shorter time frame than we have seen so far, and to date there is not much evidence that there is a real need to get answers to them. “

President Biden has been publicly silent on the settlement talks. His current focus at Guantanamo appears to be on the release of unconnected 9/11 prisoners who have never faced criminal charges and are allowed to leave; this is the status of 17 of the 31 remaining men. In total, about 780 prisoners have passed through Guantanamo since 2002.

Before these prisoners can be released, the US must find countries willing to accept them, a difficult process. Some Guantanamo detainees – the so-called “perpetual prisoners” – have been allowed to be released for more than a decade, but they are still in custody.

Nevertheless, in the past month or so, Biden has released four Guantanamo detainees. One was sent to Belize, one to Saudi Arabia and two to Pakistan. This suggests that his administration is stepping up efforts to negotiate the transfer of prisoners.

But at the same time, 9/11 settlement negotiations, which began in March 2022, are dragging on with little progress.

“We’re just waiting,” said Alka Pradhan, who represents one of the defendants in the 9/11 case, Ammar al-Baluchi. “Until we get the go-ahead that the agencies even want to continue plea negotiations, things have ground to a halt.”

“I was hoping to get answers faster than we got them,” said James Connell, another lawyer for al-Baluchi.

“I never thought in a million years that I would be here for as long as I have been here,” added Walter Ruiz, who represented 9/11 accused Mustafa al-Hawsawi for almost 14 years.

Asked to describe the status of the talks, Ruiz said: “The dialogue is ongoing, so I think this is positive progress in itself, but I can tell you that no concrete agreement has been reached so far.”

This is despite the fact that several former high-ranking government officials who once advocated a trial for the 9/11 attacks are now pushing for plea deals. Among them is former Solicitor General Ted Olson, whose wife Barbara died in one of the hijacked planes. He recently stated that the military court was “doomed from the start”. And in my memoirs One damn thing after anotherFormer US Attorney General William Barr calls Guantanamo, whose trial and jail has cost US taxpayers more than $6 billion since 2002, “a hopeless mess.”

Rem of the Center for Torture Victims noted that US federal courts have successfully investigated hundreds of terrorism cases. But he said taking the 9/11 case from military court to federal court is practically and legally impossible at this stage, in part because the law prohibits Guantanamo Bay prisoners from entering the US for any reason.

“The 9/11 case will not be considered by military commissions, it is not even remotely close to it and never will be,” Rehm said. “Therefore, to those who object to the resolution of the case by a plea agreement, I would ask: what is the alternative?

“Pleading guilty is not just the least worst way to resolve a case,” he added. “That’s the only option left.”

The same conclusion was reached by 60-year-old Glenn Morgan, whose father died in the collapse of the World Trade Center. He wants the defendants in the 9/11 case to be executed. But after two decades of political stalemate in Guantanamo, including the comings and goings of lawyers and judges, one new lawyer who asked for three years to train, and one judge who quit after two weeks, he says he will accept a plea deal.

“I don’t know if Republicans and Democrats can come to an agreement,” Morgan said, noting that his mother died about four years after his father’s death. “But more people in my family have passed away and those people have not seen a guilty verdict against these people responsible for killing my father… so the clock is ticking.”

And the longer the 9/11 case drags on, the more he worries that the defendants themselves will die without being found guilty.

“That would be far more tragic than a plea agreement,” Morgan said, “and it’s a tragedy that could have been completely avoided. And shame on us if we Americans, or our politicians, cannot get out of our own way. .”

The White House did not respond to an email asking for comment. Prosecutors at Guantanamo declined to comment, saying they wished to “refrain from making any public statements that could prejudice or adversely affect the trial.” The Department of Defense told NPR that it “cannot comment on the court cases,” but noted that “it is expected that these [settlement] discussions will continue for some time.”

But for Adele Welty, a woman whose son died in the attacks, even the possibility of a final settlement leaves her elated after years of waiting.

“Time does not heal all wounds, it just covers the wounds and forms a crust that can be removed at any time,” Welty said. However, she added, “In my opinion, life in prison with no chance of parole is justice.”

This story was edited by Meg Anderson and Barry Hardimon and produced by Meg Anderson. Photo editing and art direction by Emily Bogle.