WASHINGTON — Throughout 4 presidencies, the query of the right way to get hold of a measure of justice in courtroom for the assaults of Sept. 11, 2001, has vexed American officers. A navy tribunal case towards 5 Guantánamo Bay detainees accused of conspiring with the hijackers has spun its wheels for greater than a decade with no trial in sight.

Now it’s the Biden administration’s flip. Prosecutors have proposed ending what could possibly be extra irritating years of litigation, suggesting a deal wherein the defendants would plead responsible in change for being spared the potential for the demise penalty. However prospects for resolving the case stay murky, underlining political and authorized obstacles which have hardened within the technology because the assaults.

The White Home is distancing itself from the negotiations, declining to weigh in and leaving it to the Pentagon to determine how finest to proceed. Officers there, nevertheless, are stated to be unsure they’ve the precise to determine on a plan of action with such main implications.

The difficulty stays politically fraught. Some kin of the practically 3,000 victims of the Sept. 11 assaults need a trial with the prospect, nevertheless distant, of executing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who’s accused of being the mastermind of the assaults, and his 4 co-defendants. Others oppose the demise penalty on precept, don’t have any religion that the tribunals will get hold of justice or have develop into resigned to the concept, as a result of the defendants have been tortured by the Bush-era C.I.A., capital punishment is unlikely.

Influential Republicans in Congress have opposed lifting authorized restrictions on transferring detainees to a jail on home soil — a ban that makes it unimaginable to place the 5 defendants on trial earlier than the extra useful civilian courtroom system.

For over a decade, the case has been slowed down by seemingly ceaseless disputes.

Underneath President Barack Obama in 2009, Legal professional Normal Eric H. Holder Jr. supposed to deliver the 5 prisoners to Manhattan for trial in federal courtroom. However the plan collapsed amid a wave of worry after an unsuccessful terrorist assault that Christmas. Congress barred the switch of the detainees onto home soil, and the Obama administration reluctantly introduced the case earlier than a navy fee as a substitute.

A decade later, beneath President Donald J. Trump, Legal professional Normal William P. Barr determined that the Guantánamo navy commissions system “had develop into a hopeless mess,” as he wrote in his memoir, and concluded that it needs to be deserted. The commentary was particularly notable as a result of in September 2001, as a non-public citizen, he had recommended the usage of tribunals to President George W. Bush’s White Home.

Underneath Mr. Barr, the Justice Division had begun a contemporary have a look at the proof and decided it might win a conviction in federal courtroom. Officers supposed to maintain pursuing the matter as a capital case, however they didn’t analyze the probability of sustaining any demise sentences upon enchantment in mild of the torture, in response to an individual conversant in these deliberations.

Mr. Barr requested senior Republican lawmakers to drop the switch ban to permit a trial in federal courtroom in spite of everything, arguing that it needs to be separate from the concept of closing the Guantánamo jail. (Mr. Trump had vowed to maintain the jail open, and lifted Mr. Obama’s closure order.) However congressional Republicans, who had invested closely in undermining Mr. Holder’s plan a decade earlier, didn’t wish to reverse course. The concept went nowhere.

Now, beneath President Biden, senior nationwide safety attorneys are wrestling with whether or not to endorse a plea deal. Prosecutors offered the query to the administration practically a 12 months in the past, however the White Home has to this point steadfastly refused to weigh in, in response to officers conversant in inner deliberations.

As an alternative, the query is presently being managed by the Pentagon’s normal counsel, Caroline D. Krass. Through the Obama administration, she had been the final counsel for the C.I.A.

Late final 12 months, Ms. Krass convened a safe videoconference assembly with senior attorneys from a number of different businesses. All signaled provisional assist for making an attempt to succeed in a plea settlement, in response to individuals briefed on the delicate inner deliberations and who spoke on the situation of anonymity.

The circle of officers Ms. Krass has consulted is alleged to incorporate Rebecca Ingber, a senior State Division lawyer and knowledgeable in worldwide and nationwide safety legislation, and Matthew G. Olsen, the pinnacle of the Justice Division’s nationwide safety division.

In 2009, Mr. Olsen led an interagency activity pressure that re-examined the roughly 240 detainees nonetheless on the jail and advisable who needs to be transferred, prosecuted or held in indefinite wartime detention with out trial.

Mr. Obama had established the duty pressure as a primary step towards closing the jail. The concept was to switch to different international locations as many detainees as attainable, placed on trial those that could possibly be prosecuted, and home each convicts and people deemed untriable however too harmful to launch in a distinct jail inside in the USA. Congress blocked that plan, however Mr. Obama considerably diminished the detainee inhabitants. Right this moment, solely 35 prisoners stay.

The present discussions over a plea settlement don’t tackle the place the boys would serve their sentences, which could possibly be as much as life in jail. For now, due to the switch ban, they might keep at Guantánamo.

As an alternative, the talks have targeted partly on how they might serve any sentence. The defendants need pledges that they won’t be held in supermax circumstances or solitary confinement — they’re allowed to eat and pray collectively now — and can have periodic entry to attorneys, in response to individuals conversant in the proposed deal.

Some additionally need a civilian-run psychological well being program geared toward treating what they are saying are the persevering with results of torture from their Bush-era C.I.A. interrogations: traumatic mind accidents, sleeplessness and different issues.

Prosecutors name these elements “coverage rules,” and in courtroom filings have stated they’ve been “beneath energetic consideration by numerous ranges of the federal government” since March.

Ms. Krass, Mr. Olsen and Ms. Ingber declined to remark, as did a spokesperson for the Nationwide Safety Council. A senior Pentagon spokesman, Chris Meagher, stated by e mail that “U.S. authorities officers are persevering with to debate the proposed coverage rules in reference to extraordinarily complicated circumstances involving quite a few interagency equities.”

In March, as The New York Occasions has reported, a lawyer on the Nationwide Safety Council wrote a letter to officers within the navy commissions system saying that the Biden administration would take no place on any case. The letter copied Ms. Krass.

The letter stated that Mr. Biden remained devoted to decreasing the detainee inhabitants on the jail and that the purpose might embody resolving pending circumstances via pretrial agreements — a framing that appeared to seek advice from comparatively minor circumstances, wherein a detainee might serve out a sentence after which be launched. But it surely burdened that the White Home wouldn’t prescribe what to do in any case or in any other case intrude.

Mr. Mohammed and the opposite 4 prisoners have been captured in Pakistan in 2002 and 2003 and tortured by the C.I.A., which prioritized gathering intelligence on Al Qaeda and future assaults over acquiring lawful proof. They have been transferred to the navy jail at Guantánamo in 2006.

Logistical challenges, fights over the foundations and resistance by the C.I.A. to declassify details about the defendants’ first years of detention have loomed over the proceedings. Years of revelations about their torture in detention and the potential for the F.B.I.’s proof towards them to be contaminated by their prior remedy have led even proponents of the demise penalty to privately query whether or not such a sentence could possibly be sustained on enchantment.

For now, the present navy choose within the case, Col. Matthew N. McCall, has canceled all public hearings since March, when prosecutors who had been on the case for greater than a dozen years proposed the plea talks.

However not one of the events appear to wish to return to courtroom for but extra pretrial hearings as they anticipate the Biden administration to determine.

If hearings towards a trial do resume, it’s going to finally be as much as Colonel McCall, or a future ‌choose, to proceed inspecting essential pretrial points, together with which‌ proof is just too tainted by torture to be used, and whether or not a treatment could be to take away the potential for capital punishment. The method might grind on for an undetermined time period even earlier than a jury is seated for what could possibly be a yearlong trial, adopted by extra years of inevitable appeals.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who has lengthy favored navy commissions and having a wartime jail the place terrorism suspects could possibly be held and interrogated with out trial, stated this month that he had supported Mr. Barr’s thought of bringing the case to federal courtroom, so long as Mr. Trump was in workplace. However he didn’t assist the concept now, he stated, as a result of he didn’t belief Mr. Biden to maintain Guantánamo open as soon as its most infamous detainees have been gone.

“I informed Barr that I get the need to speed up this trial and convey about justice for the 9/11 households,” he stated. “That may be a worthy purpose. However I don’t wish to do something to undermine the flexibility to carry somebody, if we seize somebody who has invaluable intelligence.”