Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York, has struck a deal with US prosecutors to avoid the death sentence.
The Pentagon said that prosecutors and Mohammed reached the deal whereby he and two others, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, would plea guilty to the charges but would avoid the death penalty trial in exchange.
This agreement would finally resolve their 20-year-old case, which had dragged for years due to pre-trial maneuverings.
In particular, manoeuvring was surrounding whether the men could be fairly tried.
Mohammed and the two others, who were arrested from Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003 and have been languishing in the US-controlled Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The proposal had been suggested last year but had deeply divided the families of victims.
Apart from planning the operation in which commercial airliners crashed into the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001, Mohammed is also accused of having personally beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 with his "blessed right hand," and of having helped in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people.
Walid bin Attash is accused of training two of the hijackers involved in the attacks. He has confessed to buying explosives and recruiting terrorists who killed 17 in the attack on the US warship USS Cole. Attash subsequently fled and hid in Afghanistan and eventually in Pakistan once the US invaded the landlocked country.
Mustafa al-Hawsawi is accused of managing finances for the terror operation. He was also arrested in Pakistan in March 2003.