A divided federal appeals court in Washington DC has invalidated a plea agreement that would have allowed accused “9/11 mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other co-defendants to plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, according to US media reports. The plea agreement, which involved a life sentence without the possibility of parole for Mohammed and his co-defendants, was thrown out in a 2-1 decision by the judges of the court of appeals in DC.
Mohammed, a man accused of organizing and directing the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, in which almost 3,000 people lost their lives when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been held in Guantanamo Bay, a US prison camp in Cuba, since his capture in 2003.
Under the terms of the proposed plea deal, families of victims of the 9/11 attacks would have been allowed to question Mohammed, who would have been obligated to answer “fully and truthfully,” according to lawyers involved. Still, the BBC’s US partner CBS News reported that the victims’ families were divided on the plea agreement. Some objected because they believed that a trial was necessary to achieve justice and uncover more details about the attacks, while others started to see the deal as a means to secure answers and bring closure to the painful case.
Extensive negotiations spanning two years had gone into the plea agreement, which had the military prosecutors’ and the senior Pentagon officials’ approval in Guantanamo Bay. However, pre-trial hearings that have lasted more than a decade have been complicated by the question of whether torture inflicted on Mohammed and other defendants while in US custody, including waterboarding and other forms of abuse, would compromise the evidence.
In 2003, after his arrest in Pakistan, Mohammed was held at secret CIA prisons known as “black sites” for three years, where he experienced simulated drowning 183 times and was subjected to sleep deprivation and forced nudity.
In July of the previous year, the Biden administration announced pledging deals with Mohammed and three other co-defendants. However, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin overruled the agreement two days later, asserting that he was the sole authority to make such an agreement. In December, a military court ruled against Austin’s reversal, seemingly reinstating the ability to avoid the death penalty. The appeals court ultimately invalidated the plea deal, declaring that Austin acted within his legal authority in December 2024. Judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao argued that the secretary of defense “determined that ‘families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out.'” However, Judge Robert Wilkins disgreed, stating that the government “has not come within a country mile of proving clearly and indisputably that the Military Judge erred.”
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78nxqqp2leo
