US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Friday scrapped a plea agreement with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, just two days after the announcement of a deal that reportedly would have taken the death penalty off the table.
Deals with Mohammed and two alleged accomplices announced on Wednesday had appeared to have moved their long-running cases toward a resolution — but sparked anger among some relatives of those killed in the attacks, as well as criticism from leading Republican politicians.
“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 wrote in a memorandum addressed to Susan Escallier, who oversaw the case.
Photo: Reuters
“I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024 in the above-referenced case,” the memo said.
The cases against the Sept. 11 defendants have been bogged down in pretrial maneuverings for years, while the accused remained held at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba.
The New York Times this week reported that Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi had agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy in exchange for a life sentence, instead of facing a trial that could lead to their executions.
Much of the legal jousting surrounding the men’s cases has focused on whether they could be tried fairly after having undergone methodical torture at the hands of the CIA.
The plea agreements would have avoided that thorny issue, but they also sparked sharp criticism from political opponents of US President Joe Biden’s administration.
US Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican and chairman of the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Austin that said the deals were “unconscionable,” while House Speaker Mike Johnson said they were a “slap in the face” to the families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Sept.11 attacks.
Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, described the agreements as a “sweetheart deal with 9/11 terrorists,” saying during a campaign rally: “We need a president who kills terrorists, not negotiates with them.”
Mohammed was regarded as one of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s most trusted and intelligent lieutenants before his March 2003 capture in Pakistan.
The trained engineer — who has said he masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks “from A to Z” — was involved in a string of major plots against the US, where he had attended university.
Bin Attash, a Saudi of Yemeni origin, allegedly trained two of the hijackers who carried out the attacks, and his US interrogators also said he confessed to buying the explosives and recruiting members of the team that killed 17 sailors in an attack on the USS Cole.
Hawsawi is suspected of managing the financing for the attacks.
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