AN ALLEGED terrorist behind 9/11 and other detainees at Guantanamo Bay will get Covid-19 vaccines as soon as next week – before most Americans.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the supposed principal architect of the 9/11 attack, and fellow inmates at the prison in Cuba will start getting the jab thanks to a newly signed order, the Pentagon revealed on Friday.
The injections will be “offered to all detainees and prisoners” and could be available to them as early as next week, Department of Defense spokesman Michael Howard told the New York Post on Friday.
“It will be administered on a voluntary basis and in accordance with the Department’s priority distribution plan,” Howard said.
Terry Adirim, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for health affairs and an appointee of President Joe Biden, signed the order on Wednesday, according to the Pentagon.
The order means that the inmates will have a chance to get inoculated sooner than the majority of free and innocent Americans.
Mohammed, accused of engineering the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack that killed 2,977 Americans, is among 40 detainees at the US military prison in Cuba.
While the Biden administration is ramping up vaccine distribution—aiming to inject 100million Americans in the president’s first 100 days in office and 300million Americans by the summer—the country still lags behind.
Many seniors are still struggling to land appointments for the jab and it is not yet available to younger Americans.
Heroes of 9/11 including Tom Von Essen, a New York City fire commissioner during the attack, said “it’s f***ing nuts” that Mohammed could get the vaccine first.
“You can’t make this up, the ridiculousness of what we get from our government,” Von Essen told the Post.
“They will run the vaccine down to those lowlifes at Guantanamo Bay before every resident of the United States of America gets it is the theater of the absurd.”
Brian Sullivan, a retired special security agent with the Federal Aviation Administration, said he was “incensed” and that the order was “totally outrageous.”
“I’m 75. I haven’t gotten my Covid vaccine. They’re going to give it Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?” Sullivan told the newspaper.
“This news adds insult to injury. It’s [a] slap in the face to the 9/11 victims’ families.”
Sullivan added that this year will be the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and “the terrorists are still at Guantanamo and now we’re going to give them the Covid vaccine, it’s just insane.”
Republican Rep Elise Stefanik said it is “inexcusable and un-American” that Biden “is choosing to prioritize convicted terrorists in Gitmo over vulnerable American seniors or veterans.”
