Ex-AG Holder: Accused 9/11 terrorists avoid death row because of 'political hacks' who blocked a U.S. trial

WASHINGTON — Former Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday slammed the “political hacks” who blocked the trial of accused Sept. 11 terrorists in federal court nearly 15 years ago, saying those politicians owed an apology to the families of the victims of the attack for delaying justice against Guantanamo Bay detainees who Holder said would be “nothing more than a memory” had they been tried and convicted in the United States.

After years of proceedings in an largely untested military commissions system in Guantanamo Bay that has been described as “Kafkaesque” and has been mired by seemingly endless delays, the Pentagon announced Wednesday that accused Sept. 11 “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his co-defendants, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi, had reached a plea deal that will spare them from the death penalty.

Back in 2009, then-Attorney General Holder announced that Mohammed and four others would face trial in a federal court in Manhattan and promised to seek the death penalty in the case. But his plan quickly drew stiff political opposition from Republicans and many Democrats in Congress, who blocked the transfer of any detainees held at the military detention facility built on leased land in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from being transferred to America to face justice. Eleven years ago, in 2013, Holder said that Mohammed and his associates would have been “on death row as we speak” had the case gone to federal court as he proposed.

Now, more than 20 years after Mohammed, also known as KSM, was captured in Pakistan and subsequently tortured by the CIA, Holder said military prosecutors got the best deal they could under the circumstances. But he blamed Congress for