The Pentagon chief loses bid to reject 9/11 plea deals
WASHINGTON — A military appeals court has condemned Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s attempt to reject the treaty Plea deals have been reached for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants in the September 11 attacks, a US official said.
The decision put the agreements back on track that would see the three men plead guilty to one of the deadliest attacks ever on the United States, in exchange for being spared the possibility of the death penalty. Al-Qaeda’s attacks killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001, and spurred U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in what the George W. Bush administration called the war on terror.
The army The Court of Appeal has announced its ruling Monday evening, the U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
Military prosecutors and lawyers for Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the attacks, and two co-defendants reached a plea deal after two years of government-sanctioned negotiations. The deals were announced late last summer.
Supporters of the plea deal see it as a way to resolve the legally problematic case against the U.S. military commission men at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. The preliminary investigations against Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi have been ongoing for more than a decade.
Much of the emphasis of the arguments in the preliminary investigation was on the manner in which this was done torture of the men while in CIA custody could affect the overall evidence in the case in the first years after their detention.
Within days of news of the plea deal this summer, Austin issued a summary order he was destroying them.
He cited the severity of the September 11 attacks, saying that as defense secretary he would have to decide on plea deals that would spare the suspects the possibility of execution.
Defense lawyers said Austin had no legal authority to overturn a decision already approved by the court’s highest authority at Guantanamo, saying the move amounted to unlawful interference in the case.
The military judge who heard the September 11 case, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, agreed that Austin was unable to throw out the plea deals after they were underway. That was the reason for the Ministry of Defense’s appeal to the military appeals court.
Austin now has the opportunity to try his hand at presenting the plea deals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. There was no immediate word from the Pentagon on a next step.