The five men were charged in 2008 with plotting or assisting the hijackers who flew four planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.
Lawyers for the five men have requested certain assurances in exchange for their guilty pleas, beginning with the removal of the death penalty.
Such a deal is likely to outrage some of the 9/11 victims’ families, a number of whom have been vocal in advocating for the perpetrators to be executed.
The five defendants may also seek to serve out their sentences at Guantanamo, where they are able to pray and eat in groups, rather than in a high-security facility in the US where they could be placed in solitary confinement.
Such a move would hamper Joe Biden’s moves to shutter detention facilities on the US base in Cuba.
A key issue in the plea negotiations will be how many of Mohammed’s alleged accomplices will serve life sentences without possibility of parole.
Mohamed, 58, has boasted that he was the chief architect of the September 11 attacks “from A to Z”, training the 19 hijackers involved.
However lawyers for two of the defendants – Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Ammar al-Baluchi, who is Mohammed’s nephew – claimed they were unaware of the September 11 plot when they helped some of the hijackers with money transfers and other arrangements.
The other defendants are Walid bin Attash, who is alleged to have helped train two of the hijackers, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, accused of organising logistics in the attack.
The New York Times reported that plea negotiations began last week after a lawyer for one of the defendants quit the case, threatening another months-long delay to the case.
A lead case prosecutor, Clayton Trivett Jr, wrote to the suspects’ lawyers last week proposing a discussion on “whether pretrial agreements are possible for all five cases”, according to The New York Times.
The proceedings had been delayed by disputes over evidence submitted in the case, specifically the use of torturein obtaining testimony.
Mohamed was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and held by the CIA in overseas “black sites” where he was waterboarded 183 times.
