News organizations seek unsealing of plea deal with 9/11 defendants
WASHINGTON — Seven news organizations filed a legal motion on Friday asking the U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to release the plea agreement the prosecutors reached with alleged mastermind behind 9/11 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants.
The plea agreements, filed early last month and promptly sealed, prompted objections from Republican lawmakers and families of some of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks. The controversy grew when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a few days later he revoked the dealthe result of two years of negotiations between government prosecutors and defense lawyers, overseen by Austin’s office.
Austin’s move made sure commotion during the preliminary hearings now in their second decade in Guantanamo, prompting the three defendants to suspend participation in further preliminary hearings. Their lawyers filed new complaints that Austin’s move was illegal and amounted to unlawful interference by him and GOP lawmakers.
Seven news organizations — Fox News, NBC, NPR, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Univision — filed the claim with the military commission. The commission alleges that the Guantanamo court failed to show that the U.S. government’s interests were significantly harmed by allowing the public to learn the terms of the agreement.
The public’s need to know what is in the sealed documents “has only become more acute as the Pretrial Agreements have become embroiled in political controversy,” attorneys for the news organizations argued in Friday’s motion. “Rather than threatening a compelling governmental interest, public access to these documents will help to calm widespread speculation and accusations.”
The defendants’ legal objections to Austin’s actions and government prosecutors’ response to them also remain secret.
The George W. Bush administration established the military commission at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay after the 2001 attacks. The 9/11 case remains in preliminary hearings after more than a decade, as judges, the government and defense lawyers debate the extent to which torture of the defendants during the years in CIA custody after their arrest has rendered the evidence legally inadmissible. Staff turnover and the court’s distance from the U.S. have also slowed the proceedings.
Members of the press and public must travel to Guantanamo Bay to watch the trial, or to U.S. military installations to watch it remotely via video. Court records are typically sealed indefinitely for security checks seeking confidential information.