9/11 community demands swift trial, death penalty for accused: ‘There should be zero mercy’

A New York City pol whose district was pummeled by 9/11 joined survivors of the terror attack and relatives of other victims Monday to demand the feds finally set a trial date for its alleged mastermind.

Republican Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis added that the government must seek the death penalty for accused fiend Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his cohorts — after the Pentagon initially OK’d a plea deal that took their potential execution off the table.

“At the end of the day, what we want is for the government to provide justice to the families and those Americans who were killed,” said Malliotakis, who was flanked by 9/11 survivors, family members and first responders at “Postcards,” Staten Island’s Sept. 11 Memorial at North Shore Waterfront Esplanade Park.

“The only way we’re going to do that is if we seek the maximum penalty, which is death,” she said. “Anything short of the death penalty is unacceptable. There should be zero mercy, zero mercy when it comes to these monstrous terrorists.

“Just like they had no mercy for the people of the United States of America and didn’t care that they were killing thousands of innocent people,” she said.

The Republican representative — whose district includes Staten Island and parts of southern Brooklyn — made the pointed remarks days after the shocking news that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin revoked a set of astonishing plea deals that would have spared Mohammed and his co-conspirators the death penalty.

In a Friday memo, Austin asserted his own authority to nix the widely criticized plea agreements.

Several people at Monday’s event openly approved of the move, including Andrew Ansbro, the president Uniformed Firefighters Association who, as a member of Engine 58, was buried under rubble from the World Trade Center’s Tower Two as he tried to clear people out of the neighboring skyscraper.

“I applaud Secretary Austin’s putting the death penalty back on the table for these murderers,” Ansbro said.

“They should spend every day they have left in fear that their lives will be cut short,” he said of the accused terrorists.

Tommy Smith, a 44-year-old vet of FDNY 12 Rescue and Search whose airways had to be reconstructed because of 9/11-related illnesses, said, “We’re all pissed off” at the case’s twists and turns.

“We’re all amazed how this keeps getting kicked down the road and nothing is being done,” he said.

Smith, who also lost his dad that day when the North Tower fell on his Hazmat team, said the initial plea deal was “bulls–t.”

“The plea deal, the timing, keeping it secret from the families, from the American public … it really is making us all sick,” he said.

The plea deal would have forced Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi to admit to the murder of 2,976 people that day — in exchange for allowing them to live.

The terrible trio have been held at Guantánamo Bay, a US military prison near the southern tip of Cuba, since 2003.

Their guilty-plea hearings could have been scheduled for as soon as this week, with sentencing hearings expected sometime next summer, according to an Office of Military Commissions letter obtained by The Post.

In the wake of Austin’s memo, the plea hearings have been canceled, the office said.

Terry Strada, the national chair for 9/11 Families United, said at Monday’s press conference that she worries whether keeping the terrorists still alive might one day mean they’ll be swapped in a prisoner exchange.

“We don’t want to see that happen ever in our lifetime!” she said. “So the death penalty serves the right message, and it serves the right purpose. … We need to silence [Mohammed].”

NYPD union President Patrick Hendry echoed the sentiment.

“There is an evil right now — around this world — that’s seeing what happens with this case,” he said. “Ultimate justice needs to happen. The ultimate punishment needs to happen.

“These families deserve it and our country safety demands it.”

The head of the Port Authority police union, Frank Conti, added, “To each and every member of our Line Of Duty families, a debt is owed.

“They all should expect our nation to vigorously seek the maximum punishment for the perpetrators of this mass murder,” said Conti, noting that at least 100 members of the PA’s police department and civilian work force perished on 9/11 or from related illnesses afterward.

“The thought of plea bargaining with these people is an affront to the sacrifice of those who lost their lives and those who live on to remember them,’’ Conti said.

We appreciate Defense Secretary Austin’s revocation of these plea agreements, and we look forward to the fullest measure of justice being served.”

-Additional reporting by Larry Celona