Former Pennsylvania Gov. Mark Schweiker sees no justice in 9/11 prisoner plea deal
Share this post:
For more than 20 years, former Pennsylvania Gov. Mark Schweiker has been a conduit for information and healing for the families of the 33 passengers of United Flight 93, all of whom were killed on Sept. 11, 2001 in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
In many ways, Schweiker has also filled that role with scores of residents of Shanksville, the small town outside of Pittsburgh that became the final resting place for those fated passengers and has become one of the national shrines to the nearly 3,000 lives lost on 9/11.
On Thursday, Schweiker expressed bewilderment and consternation over the plea deal brokered with the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks.
The U.S. Defense Department on Wednesday announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the alleged mastermind of the attack —and two of his co-defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, had agreed to plead guilty, avoiding the death penalty.
Schweiker, who just 24 days after the terrorist attacks was sworn in as Pennsylvania’s 44th governor, said he was feeling “quizzical and disturbed” at the dramatic development in the decades-long cases against the prisoners.
“Families want a public review,” he said during a phone interview with PennLive. “They want a form of public justice. They want the public hearing. I find it disgusting this deal…not just that they will be afforded a life sentence and probably in supermax [prison] for all three of them, but that they are going to be given an opportunity to offer their sanitized rendition as to why they perpetrated what amounts to the second bloodiest day in American history.”
“That’s how some of the families feel and that’s how I see it,” he said. “This deal in my mind has blood all over it and there should be no deal.”
In addition to the thousands of lives lost in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the 9/11 attacks transformed a nation. In spite of the fear and sadness that gripped the nation for years afterwards, the attacks largely sowed national unity and bipartisanship.
But in the more than 20 years that the prisoners were held in captivity, anguish over the drawn-out judicial process brewed as their planned trials before a military tribunal were endlessly postponed.
Schweiker, who became the only person to assume the office of governor as a result of the attacks after then-Gov. Tom Ridge was tapped to lead the newly minted Homeland Security Administration, said no justice had been served by the plea deal.
“It’s hard to see it as an impressive outcome or a impressive judicial outcome when almost 3,000 people died at their hands,” said Schweiker, executive-in-residence of Rider University’s Homeland Security Policy program.
“Add to that the thousands of deaths and cancer diagnoses for those who worked on the pile in Manhattan and I see the scale pulling towards injustice,” he said. “The families feel the same way. Where did this come from?”
In the intervening years, as terrorists were captured, the U.S. military came under criticism from human rights organizations and legal experts questioning the judicial, but also the secretive and brutal interrogation process used on the prisoners.
The U.S. military has admitted using torture, including waterboarding, on the Guantánamo Bay prisoners.
“Everyone knows that aspect of torture had weakened the military prosecutor’s case, but I and most families want to see the judicial process unfold and be provided insights as to the mindset of the terrorists,” Schweiker said. “Are they capable of offering sorrow and apologies? Are they capable of talking about why they hate America to the extent they recruited these terrorists? They want to hear more. That’s going to be terminated here.”
Schweiker said he has always been a proponent of the death penalty for the prisoners.
“As I see it, it’s still a justified pursuit,” he said.