US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin withdraws plea deal for alleged 9/11 plotters
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has withdrawn plea deals reached earlier this week with the alleged mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and two co-defendants, a sudden shift in politically charged cases that have dragged on for years.
The brief memo released Friday comes just two days after the Pentagon announced that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi had reached a settlement with the head of the military court in Guntánamo Bay. The three men have been held at a US military base in Cuba for nearly two decades, where they faced the death penalty.
Austin also revoked the authority of retired Brigadier General Susan Escallier, who oversaw the Guantanamo war tribunal, to participate in the agreements with three prisonersretained that power for herself. Escallier was appointed to her position in 2023.
“I have determined that given the importance of the decision to enter into a pretrial agreement with the defendant in the above case, the responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority under the Military Commissions Act of 2009,” Austin wrote. in a memorandum to Escallier.
“Effective immediately, I hereby revoke your authority in the case referenced above to enter into the pretrial agreement and retain that authority for myself. Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pretrial agreements you entered into on July 31, 2024” in the cases in question, the memo states.
The agreements reached on Wednesday have drawn a backlash from Republicans, who accused the Biden administration of negotiating with individuals accused of involvement in the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people and dramatically altered the domestic and international landscape of the United States. foreign policy.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the decision “a disgusting abdication of government responsibility.” It also drew some criticism from families of those killed on September 11, when attackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
Mohammed’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. government has not disclosed the exact terms of the three men’s initial pleas, but they are expected to plead guilty and avoid a full trial. The proceedings have been mired in legal and ethical controversy over the defendants’ length of detention without trial and instances of torture.
Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, was arrested in 2003 in Pakistan, and held in CIA prisons before being sent to Guantanamo Bay, where a military detention camp was opened during the George W Bush administration to hold prisoners captured in the US “war on terror” following the September 11 attacks. The agency has since been found to have subjected him to waterboarding, a form of torture, at least 183 times.
A 2014 report by a special Senate committee found that “internal CIA records describe waterboarding torture [Khaled Sheikh Mohammed] as developing into a ‘recent string of drownings’”.
Harrowing stories about such techniques have sparked a fierce debate in the United States about the legality of the cases against Mohammed and other prisoners, and the ongoing case has become a deeply divisive subject in Washington.
