I was surprised by the news that the ‘mastermind’ of the 9/11 terrorist attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and two of his associates, who are being held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, made a deal with the U.S. authorities. According to this deal, he would plead guilty to his crime – a crime so heinous that it changed history – in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.

I was doubly surprised. First, because this relentless enemy of the U.S. agreed to negotiate with the ‘the Great Satan’ – as some say in the Middle East – to save his life, and second, because the U.S. offered him this opportunity, given the magnitude of the crime he committed against our country.

Government negotiators should also consider this not insignificant question: How would the approximately 3,000 victim families and society in general react to this decision, especially during this election season? Wouldn’t this be ‘grist for Trump’s mill’?

Perhaps for these reasons, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin intervened and canceled the deal.

The Associated Press reports: “The U.S. military commission overseeing the cases of five defendants in the Sept. 11 attacks has been stuck in pre-trial hearings and other preliminary court action since 2008. The torture that the defendants underwent while in CIA custody has been among the challenges slowing the cases, and left the prospect of full trials and verdicts still uncertain, in part because of the inadmissibility of evidence linked to the torture.”

Thus, this decision is not as simple as it seems.

On one hand, there is the question of whether someone who caused the deaths of nearly 3,000 people and the destruction of the world-renowned Twin Towers and surrounding buildings, including the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, deserves to live. Shouldn’t he face the death penalty, not only for the act itself but also to send a message of deterrence to other aspiring terrorists?

On the other hand, isn’t life in prison a worse punishment than immediate death?

And aren’t there numerous studies suggesting that the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent to aspiring criminals, especially those so brainwashed that they commit such a large-scale crime?

These are difficult questions to answer.