3-8-2024 (WASHINGTON)Â US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday (Aug 2) revoked plea deals agreed to earlier this week with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man accused of masterminding the September 11th attacks, and two of his alleged accomplices, who are held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Pentagon had announced on Wednesday that plea deals had been reached, although details were not provided at the time. However, according to a US official, the agreements almost certainly involved guilty pleas in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table.
In a surprising turn of events, Austin relieved Susan Escallier, who oversees the Pentagon’s Guantanamo war court, of her authority to enter into pre-trial agreements in the case. The Defense Secretary took on the responsibility himself, issuing a memo that stated, “Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements …”
The initial announcement of the plea deals drew swift and fierce criticism from Republican lawmakers, including House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who strongly condemned the agreements.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the most notorious inmate at the Guantanamo detention facility, is accused of orchestrating the plot that led to the hijacking of commercial passenger aircraft and their subsequent crashes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The devastating attacks, known as 9/11, claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people and plunged the United States into a two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.
In addition to Mohammed, plea deals had also been reached with two other detainees, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, who were allegedly involved in the 9/11 plot.
