The decision came after the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, announced it had reached plea deals with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged accomplices that the three would have received life sentences instead of death penalty.
In a surprising turn of events, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has nullified a plea agreement for the accused mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, along with two other defendants. This decision reinstates the death penalty option for the trio, as reported by Associated Press. Austin has taken direct oversight of the military tribunal at Guantanamo, bringing the death penalty back into consideration for Mohammed and his accomplices.
“In light of the significance of the decision, I have determined that the authority to make a decision on accepting the plea agreements is mine,” Austin wrote in an order released Friday night, thereby nullifying the agreements.
The decision came just days after the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, announced it had reached plea deals with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged accomplices, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. Under the agreements, the three would have received life sentences. While some families of the 9/11 victims had reluctantly accepted the initial plea deal, the latest development has stirred anger among many.
Letters sent to the families of the 9/11 victims revealed that the accused would receive life imprisonment, triggering outrage among some relatives. Critics have denounced the deal for precluding full trials and the possibility of death penalties, leading to widespread condemnation. Republicans wasted no time in attributing the agreement to the Biden administration, despite the White House’s denial of any prior knowledge of the arrangement.
Mohammed and the other defendants anticipated formally entering their pleas under the deal as early as next week. The US military commission, which has been handling the cases of five defendants involved in the September 11 attacks, has been bogged down in pre-trial hearings and preliminary court actions since 2008.
Many Republican lawmakers, including House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, strongly criticized the plea deals. Mohammed is the most well known inmate at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, which was set up in 2002 by then-U.S. President George W. Bush to house foreign militant suspects following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Mohammed is accused of masterminding the plot to fly hijacked commercial passenger aircraft into the World Trade Center in New York City and into the Pentagon. The 9/11 attacks, as they’re known, killed nearly 3,000 people and plunged the United States into what would become a two-decade-long war in Afghanistan. Plea deals had also been reached by two other detainees: Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.