One day after federal prosecutors announced that they had struck a plea deal with three men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, New Yorkers and family members of victims had mixed reactions to the sudden news. Under the agreement, the three men — including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind — will serve life in prison but avoid a death-penalty trial.
“If Khalid Shaikh Mohammed doesn’t deserve the death penalty, who does?” said Don Arias, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, whose brother Adam was killed in the World Trade Center. From his home in Florida, Mr. Arias, 67, remembered days of searching for his brother before his remains were identified.
Mr. Arias was upset about the plea deal, and especially about the sense that people seemed to have lost interest in an act of terrorism that claimed nearly 3,000 lives and shattered Americans’ sense of security.
“Most people I talk to figure this was done years ago,” he said, referring to the trial. “My brother was 37 years old. It hurts to know that someone I know and love is now all but forgotten.
“After 9/11, we all said, ‘Never forget.’ Well, we forgot. And not only did we forget, we don’t give a damn anymore. A lot of people just want this over with.”
At the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in Lower Manhattan on Thursday, many people seemed unaware of the developments.
Visitors ran their hands over the engraved names of those who died in the attacks and snapped pictures of the sleek glass One World Trade Center building that rose near where the twin towers had been.
For Sue Ann Latterman, who was visiting New York from Colorado, Thursday morning was her first time back at ground zero since she stood next to the rubble of the World Trade Center in 2001, not long after the attacks.
“I don’t think the death penalty solves anything,” she said of the plea deal. “I think it’s crueler to live.”
Deb Nimkoff, who lives near the 9/11 Memorial and was visiting on Thursday, agreed. There is no real justice for what happened that day, she said.
“You don’t bring the people back,” Ms. Nimkoff said. “I don’t know if the families who lost people would feel better if they were killed in retaliation, but a lot of people wouldn’t feel that that’s a good source of justice.”
In a Manhattan courthouse near the memorial on Wednesday, Terry Strada was viewing evidence from the attack when she was notified of the plea deal. Ms. Strada, whose husband, Tom, was killed in the World Trade Center, is national chairwoman of 9/11 Families United and part of a lawsuit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that accuses it of direct involvement in the attacks, which the Saudis deny.
“They took away our right to have these men prosecuted and punished accordingly,” she said of the plea deal, which prosecutors announced in a letter to families of victims. “We had 150 family members in that courtroom yesterday,” she said on Thursday, “and every single person was mad.”
With the plea deal, she said, the public — and especially the families — will lose the opportunity to see prosecutors lay out their case.
“What happens to the evidence now?” she asked. “Does the government allow us to see it?”
Many family members vented their frustration that the case, which was still in pretrial hearings 23 years after the attack, was taking so long. For some, that was reason enough to welcome a resolution.
Valerie Lucznikowska, whose nephew was killed in the World Trade Center, said she had been to the Guantánamo Bay prison several times to watch pretrial hearings, but had stopped going out of frustration with the legal process.
“The plea agreements should have been done a long time ago,” she said. “The system has not worked for a long time.”
Ms. Lucznikowska belongs to the group Sept. 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, many of whose members oppose the death penalty. Her own opposition was both moral and practical, she said.
“If the death penalty stayed as the prime object of the trial, there was no way it would come to a conclusion within my lifetime,” she said.
She added: “Guantánamo Bay prison is a stain on America. How are we going to get rid of the stain? We’re not going to. But let’s get it over with.”
As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors told family members that they would have an opportunity to question prisoners accused in the attack about their roles and reasons for participating.
Bruce Blakeman, who lost a nephew in the attack, said he wanted no part of that provision. “I would have nothing to say to them. I would prefer that they be executed.”
Mr. Blakeman, a Republican who is now the Nassau County executive, was in 2001 a commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the powerful agency that built the World Trade Center and had its headquarters there. His nephew, Sgt. Thomas Jurgens, was a court officer and volunteer firefighter who was killed in the South Tower. After it collapsed, authorities never recovered more than his pistol and badge.
When news of the plea deal reached Mr. Blakeman, he said he felt only anger.
“I am not relieved, I am disappointed,” he said. “I don’t believe justice has been served.”
Kathy Vigiano, whose husband, Det. Joseph Vigiano, died at the World Trade Center, also had no interest in questioning the accused plotters.
“They’re evil,” she said. “I did face them through glass at Guantánamo. There are some evil people out there. There’s nothing I want to say to them.”
Her worry now, she said, was that some future administration would trade one or more of the men to other countries in a prisoner exchange.
She said she was disappointed about the plea agreement, but that she felt it was inevitable — that the case had gone on too long.
“Now we have to support them for the rest of their lives,” she said. “Give them food, shelter, health care. They made a mockery of our justice system.”
She added: “If it’s life in prison, then that’s how it has to be. But I would like them to get the same justice that our family members got.”
The post Families of 9/11 Victims React to News of Accused Plotters’ Plea Deal appeared first on New York Times.
