In a significant reversal, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has nullified plea deals reached earlier this week for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, and two other defendants, reinstating them as death-penalty cases.
“Today, Secretary Austin signed a memo reserving for himself the specific authority to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the 9/11 military commission cases. In addition, as the superior convening authority, the Secretary has also withdrawn from the pre-trial agreements that were signed in those cases,” the US Defense Department announced in a statement.
This decision comes just days after a US military commission disclosed that the official overseeing the war court had reached plea agreements with Mohammed and his accused accomplices, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. The deals had been met with backlash from families of the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks, who argued that the agreements would preclude full trials and the possibility of death penalties.
In his memo released Friday night, Austin emphasized the gravity of the decision, asserting that the authority to accept plea agreements in these cases rests with him. “Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements…,” Austin wrote.
The defendants, including Mohammed, who the US claims orchestrated the attacks that targeted the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, were anticipated to formally enter their pleas under the now-voided deals as early as next week. The military commission handling the cases of the five defendants has been entangled in pre-trial hearings and preliminary actions since 2008.
Republican lawmakers, notably House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, had strongly criticized the plea agreements. Mohammed, detained at Guantanamo Bay—a facility established in 2002 by then-President George W. Bush to hold foreign militant suspects post-9/11—remains the most high-profile inmate.
The September 11 attacks, which resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, led to the United States’ prolonged war in Afghanistan. Mohammed is accused of orchestrating the plan to hijack commercial passenger aircraft and crash them into significant targets, including the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
