US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Tuesday spoke for the first time on his decision to throw out a plea deal for the men accused in al-Qaeda’s attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, saying that the depth of losses and sacrifice stemming from the attacks demand that a military commission trial goes ahead.
“This wasn’t a decision that I took lightly, but I have long believed that the families of the victims, our service members and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commissions, commission trials carried out” in the case, Austin told reporters at an event with Australian officials in Annapolis, Maryland.
At the US military commission in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, lawyers and the judge in the case of accused attack mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants who had also taken plea deals were still coming to terms with Austin’s surprise order and its effect on efforts to resolve the more than 20-year-old case.
Photo: Reuters
Mohammed and four other defendants at Guantanamo are accused in the attacks, using hijacked passenger jets, that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
A fourth defendant did not agree to the plea agreement and a fifth defendant last year was ruled mentally unfit to continue facing trial.
Legal complications, including questions over how much the men’s treatment while in CIA custody in the first years after their capture has tainted the evidence and the case itself, have helped drag out proceedings.
The case remains in pre-trial hearings after more than a decade.
After about two years of plea negotiations, the retired general overseeing the military commission last week approved a plea bargain struck by prosecutors and defense attorneys that would have spared Mohammed and the two others the risk of the death penalty, in return for their guilty pleas.
Families of victims of the attacks offered differing opinions, with some welcoming the resolution and others saying they wanted to see capital trials.
Senior Republicans in the US Congress had publicly criticized the administration of US President Joe Biden for the plea bargain.
An order from Austin made public on Friday last week, in which he said he was revoking approval of the plea bargain and personally assuming that decisionmaking authority in the case, up-ended the deal.
“There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of 9/11 and the Americans that were murdered that day. Also those who died trying to save lives, and the troops and their families who gave so much for this country,” Austin said.
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