9/11 family members urge Biden to oppose plea deals with attack mastermind, 4 others

More than 2,000 family members of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks urged President Biden Monday to oppose any plea agreement with five alleged Al Qaeda bigs behind the atrocity, including purported mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM).

Last week, multiple outlets reported the Pentagon had sent letters to victims’ families informing them that plea deals are being considered for the five suspects, who have been held in the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba since 2006.

“The pain is all the worse as we learn from the Department of Justice, practically on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary, in a form letter that it is proposing a deal with terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that will prevent a public trial and will continue to keep the information provided to his legal team … secret and hidden,” the family members wrote in a letter to Biden.

Under the proposed deal, the Pentagon letter said, the Gitmo five would “accept criminal responsibility for their actions and plead guilty … in exchange for not receiving the death penalty,” according to CBS News.

“You are our President and we ask that you prioritize the interests of the victims of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks over those of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or other terrorists; that you not bow to the demands of any embarrassed government officials willing to sacrifice transparency,” Monday’s letter continued.

Prosecution of the five has been hampered for decades by questions about evidence in the case.

In particular, there has been legal uncertainty over whether the government can use information extracted through so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding — called torture by critics — as evidence in military tribunals.

Officially, 2,977 civilians were murdered when four hijacked airliners crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., and Shanksville, Pa.

Brett Eagleson, the head of 9/11 Justice, which advocates for families of the victims and backed the letter to Biden, lost his father Bruce in the South Tower that day.

“I think that the most shameful thing about this is that the 9/11 community has been fighting not only Saudi Arabia for accountability, but we’ve been fighting our own government,” Eagleson, whose mother received the plea notification letter, told The Post Monday.

“The US government wants to continue the coverup,” he added. “They do not want KSM talking and they do not want a public trial, because KSM in effect would spill the beans on everything he knows about the Saudi government involvement in 9/11 and the US intelligence failures.”

The families commended Biden for an executive order he signed early on in his administration committing to release additional information to the public about about the attacks.

But now they contend that the FBI and Justice Department continue to withhold critical information about Riyadh’s role in assisting the 19 hijackers.

“It is our fervent hope you will once again stand up for the victims and immediately demand that your government release the evidence we have tirelessly fought for, which we believe will further reveal the role Saudi agents played in the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks,” read the Monday letter.

“These agencies are continuing to show their intransigence and they’re not complying with the Biden executive order,” Eagleson said. “And we think if President Biden knew that officials in the FBI and CIA were ignoring his executive order, that he would be outraged.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.