Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused as the main plotter of 9/11, agrees to plead guilty

After spending almost two decades in the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and two of his accomplices have agreed to plead guilty in exchange for sentences of up to life in prison rather than face a death-penalty trial.

The settlement agreements with the Pentagon, announced Wednesday, bring partial closure to a case that has dragged on for twenty years and become mired in legal gridlock. Many family members of the nearly 3,000 people who died in the September 11, 2001, attacks want the 9/11 defendants put to death, but as a trial became increasingly unlikely, plea bargains were widely viewed as the only way to resolve the case.