9/11 Prosecutors In Plea Talks To Avert Mastermind's Death penalty: Report

They did not want to be sent to the supermax prison in Colorado where federal inmates are held in solitary confinement up to 23 hours a day, the report said.

Lawyers for the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and federal prosecutors are in talks to negotiate a potential plea agreement for the Pakistani terrorist and four other co-defendants that could drop the possibility of death penalty for them, according to a media report.

The report in The New York Times cited people with knowledge of the discussions as saying that "prosecutors have opened talks with lawyers" for 58-year-old Mohammed and his four co-defendants to "negotiate a potential plea agreement that would drop the possibility of execution." The report added that a guilty plea in exchange for life sentences and not execution could bring to an end the case going on for years now at Guantanamo Bay.

"Nearly a decade after the men were arraigned, the military judge has set no trial start date," it said.

The report said while no deal is expected soon, guilty pleas resulting in life sentences could force the Joe Biden administration to "modify its ambition of ending detention operations at Guantánamo Bay and instead rebrand it as a military prison for a few men." During the Trump administration, there had been a failed attempt at such talks when the accused plotters had demanded that they serve their sentences at Guantanamo, where they are able to pray and eat in groups.