Plea deals revived for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others
UNB
Publish: 07 Nov 2024, 08:50 AM
WASHINGTON
, Nov 7 (AP/UNB)- A military judge has ruled that plea agreements struck by
alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants are
valid, voiding an order by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to throw out the
deals, a government official said Wednesday.
The official spoke on
condition of anonymity because the order by the judge, Air Force Col. Matthew
McCall, has not yet been posted publicly or officially announced.
The plea agreements
would spare Mohammed and the others the risk of the death penalty in exchange
for guilty pleas in the long-running 9/11 case. Government prosecutors had
negotiated the deals with defense attorneys under government auspices, and the
top official for the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had approved
them.
The plea deals in the
Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people spurred
immediate political blowback by Republican lawmakers and others when announced
in late July.
The agreements, and
Austin's attempt to reverse them, have been one of the most fraught episodes in
a U.S. prosecution marked by delays and legal difficulties, including years of
ongoing pretrial hearings to determine the admissibility of statements by the
defendants given their years of torture in CIA custody.
Within days of the deals
becoming public this summer, Austin issued a brief order saying he was
nullifying them. Plea bargains in possible death penalty cases tied to one of
the gravest crimes ever carried out on U.S. soil were a momentous step that
should only be decided by the defense secretary, Austin said at the time.
The Pentagon is
reviewing the judge's decision and had no immediate further comment, said Maj.
Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary.
The New York Times first
reported the ruling.
Military officials have
yet to post the judge's decision on the Guantanamo military commission's online
site.
However, a legal blog
that long has covered the prosecutions from the Guantanamo courtroom said
McCall's 29-page ruling concludes that Austin lacked the authority to toss out
the plea deals.
The ruling also calls
the timing of Austin's move "fatal," coming after Guantanamo's top
official already had approved the deals, according to the blog, called
Lawdragon.
End/UNB/AP/SU