US defense chief scraps plea agreement for accused 9/11 mastermind and two other defendants

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday overrode a plea agreement reached earlier this week for the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two other defendants, reinstating them as death penalty cases.

The move comes two days after the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, announced it had reached plea deals with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two accused accomplices, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa Al-Hawsawi, in the attacks.

Letters sent to families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Al-Qaeda attacks said the plea agreement stipulated the three would serve life sentences.

Some families of the attack’s victims condemned the deal for cutting off any possibility of full trials and possible death penalties. Republicans were quick to fault the Biden administration for the deal, although the White House said after it was announced it had no knowledge of it.

Austin wrote in an order released Friday night that “in light of the significance of the decision,” he had decided that the authority to make a decision on accepting the plea agreements was his. He nullified the agreements.

“I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused… responsibility for such a decision should rest with me,” Austin said in a memorandum addressed to Susan Escallier, who oversaw the case.

“I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024 in the above-referenced case,” the memo said.

Mohammed and the other defendants had been expected to formally enter their pleas under the deal as soon as next week.

The US military commission overseeing the cases of five defendants in the Sept. 11 attacks have been stuck in pre-trial hearings and other preliminary court action since 2008. The torture that the defendants underwent while in CIA custody has slowed the cases and left the prospect of full trials and verdicts still uncertain, in part because of the inadmissibility of evidence linked to the torture.