Hey there. I'm Hallie. We're going to start with breaking
news just into us and literally the last couple of
minutes,
the Pentagon announcing that three men accused of plotting the
9/11 terror attack here in the United States have reached
plea agreements in the military commissions process.
I want to bring in our Pentagon correspondent Courtney Kuby,
who's covering this for us.
Courtney, what do we know and what has happened?
So it's 3 three men who are accused of plotting
the 9/11 attacks.
As you said, Hallie, it's.
They aren't maybe names that all of our viewers would
be familiar with,
but Mustafa Al Hasawi.
And then Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
KSM, as he's known, our viewers may be a little
bit more familiar with him because he's one of the
cases that got a lot more attention in the days
after. You can see his picture there on screen and
the days after he was arrested in Pakistan.
So all three men, as you said,
Hallie, have been held at Gitmo for more than 20
years.
And during a large portion of that time,
for years now, their attorneys have been working with the
military Commission process to try to come to some sort
of a plea agreement.
What we just learned only moments ago is they have
reached that.
This is the. The military commissions process,
it's very different than a normal court or a regular
court,
as you and I might know,
in the civilian world. Basically their attorneys and the defendants
themselves will sit down with what's called a convening authority.
This individual is sort of like a court administrator with
some of the powers of a judge.
Through many, many months, if not years,
they have been discussing these possible pleas and now they
have come to one.
We don't know the details,
though, Holly. Now, generally, because all three men were charged
with crimes that would come.
The death penalty, generally in a plea agreement like this,
they would come to some sort of a deal to
plead guilty to charges that would be just less than
the then that would yield just less than the possibility
of death penalty. That's what we believe happened here.
Now, all three are expected to appear in court at
Guantanamo Bay as early as next week,
but we don't expect any sentencing to be until sometime
next year.
So we still won't know for some time exactly,
frankly what this means as far as the next.
Steps for these three men.
Well, so that was going to be my question right
is what what does the timeline look like from here?
And it sounds like from what you're saying the timeline
is fairly extended,
at least at this point.
It is and and this is somewhat common the military
in the military commissions process where you have this this
this lag time between when an individual pleads guilty and
they're actually sentenced here. In fact,
frankly, sometimes it can take even longer than a year
for that to happen,
Hallie.