The Pentagon and FBI sent the update of the plea consideration to several families of the victims in a letter.

It said: “The Office of the Chief Prosecutor has been negotiating and is considering entering into pre-trial agreements (PTAs).”

It told the families that while no plea agreement “has been finalised, and may never be finalised, it is possible that a PTA, in this case, would remove the possibility of the death penalty”.

The news came as a disappointment to the relatives of the nearly 3,000 people who were killed by the suicide attackers who hijacked planes, flying them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon HQ in Washington and crashing one in a Pennsylvania field.

[After twenty years of waiting for military justice, we get plea deals. Blame this on long-expired Congresses that insisted on applying American domestic criminal law rather than recognize these as acts of war, not crimes. That debate was lost almost two decades ago. — Ed]