9/11 hearings at Guantanamo Bay in upheaval after surprise order by US defense chief
FORT MEADE, Maryland — The military-sponsored hearings for accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were in turmoil Wednesday after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin filed the case. decision to reject a plea agreement.
Defense attorneys argue that the settlement still stands and that participation in the preliminary hearings has been suspended, while legal objections to Austin’s action Prosecutors also raised the prospect that pretrial hearings may have to be frozen while attorneys search for statements in Austin’s order and work through the issues it raises.
The judge overseeing the case, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, acknowledged concerns about outside pressure on the case. settlement proposalwhich would have spared the defendants the possibility of the death penalty, and Austin’s subsequent order, issued Friday night, have stirred strong feelings, including among the families of the 9/11 victims. The Biden administration has faced heavy criticism from Republicans over the plea deal.
“If there is more political pressure on the parties to make a decision, one way or the other,” that could strengthen the case for illegal interference in the case, “but … it will not affect me,” McCall said during Wednesday’s hearing.
The past week’s events are the latest major disruption in the U.S. military’s prosecution of suspects accused of killing nearly 3,000 people in 2001, in an al-Qaeda plot in which hijackers seized four passenger jets and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
As former President George W. Bush and his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld waged America’s war on terror, the military commission charged with trying the 9/11 suspects struggled with a number of unusual restrictions and legal challenges in the case.
This also applies to the torture of suspects who were in CIA custody in the first years after their arrest. The commission is still working on legal questions about the influence of torture on the evidence.
The new developments began last week after Susan Escallier, the Pentagon-approved top authority over the Guantanamo Bay military commission, approved the settlement between military-appointed prosecutors and defense lawyers that had been two years in the making.
Austin said in Friday’s order that he ignored Escallier’s approval and took direct control of such decisions in the 9/11 case. He cited the significance of the case.
Defense attorneys and some legal analysts question whether the laws governing the Guantanamo proceedings allow such a revocation.
Some lawyers and rights groups say Republican criticism of the plea deal, and criticism from some of the victims’ families, appear to have influenced Austin’s action. Austin told reporters Tuesday that the severity of U.S. losses in the al Qaeda attack and in the years of U.S. military intervention that followed convinced him the cases should go to trial.
Defense attorneys told McCall on Wednesday that they still considered the plea agreement to be in effect. McCall agreed to excuse them from participating in pretrial hearings while expected challenges to Austin’s actions play out.
Gary Sowards, the lead lawyer for Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, warned the court on Wednesday that the trial alone would likely take two years, adding to the length of a troubled case that has already dragged on for more than a decade.
“To intervene in this very unusual way will create total chaos from now on,” Sowards told McCall, referring to Austin’s action.
Walter Ruiz, attorney for 9/11 suspect Mustafa al Hawsawi, called Austin’s order “an unprecedented act by a government official to reverse a valid agreement” and said it raises issues of “unlawful interference at the highest levels of government.”
Ruiz said the defense chief’s move also raised questions “about whether we can ethically continue to be involved” with the Pentagon-run commission, despite a move “that goes directly to the integrity of the system itself.”
Under the plea agreement, Mohammed, Hawsawi and co-defendant Walid bin Attash would have pleaded guilty in exchange for the government not seeking the death penalty against them. Defense attorneys stressed Wednesday that the agreement would have required the defendant to answer any remaining questions about the attack from victims’ relatives and others.
After the tumultuous start to Wednesday’s hearing, an FBI witness was questioned. Only one defendant, Aamar al Baluchi, actively participated in the defense. He had not reached an agreement to the plea agreement.
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