Plea deals that result in life sentences for 9/11 defendants are the only path to justice – and the only way to close Guantánamo

September 11, 2025, New York – On the 24th anniversary of 9/11, the Center for Constitutional Rights released the following statement. 

Every year at this time, as fall arrives in New York, we stop to remember the victims of the September 11 attacks and their families. We should also remember the countless victims of the “War on Terror” that followed, including 780 men and boys, all Muslim, sent to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where they were tortured, abused, and detained indefinitely without access to fair trials. 

Today, 15 of those men remain at Guantánamo, including our client Guled Duran, who has been approved for transfer for years. Four face charges related to 9/11 before a military commission, but the case has collapsed and will never be resolved through a contested trial because the defendants were tortured by the CIA. A fifth defendant was ruled incompetent to stand trial due to harm from his torture. The failure to resolve the 9/11 case in the only way possible after more than a decade of endless litigation – with plea deals that would result in convictions and life sentences for the defendants and answers to victim family members’ questions about the attacks – ensures nothing but a continued lack of justice and accountability for everyone involved.

Failure to end the military commissions also means that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay will continue to operate largely as it has since the U.S. military occupied the territory more than a century ago – as an offshore prison intended to hold individuals indefinitely outside of U.S. and international law. Indeed, for the last seven months, the Trump administration has exploited the failure of prior administrations to close the prison, using it unlawfully to terrorize and detain hundreds of immigrants transported there directly from the United States, many of whom are later sent to other countries without individualized regard to whether they might face torture and persecution.

Amid ongoing wars in the Middle East, extrajudicial detentions and killings in Latin America and the Caribbean, abandonment of allies and embrace of dictators, and the targeting of immigrants and deployment of military troops inside the United States, Guantánamo remains an enduring site and symbol of U.S. lawlessness in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Guantánamo must be closed permanently.