WASHINGTON — A military appeals court has ruled against an effort to oust Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. They reached plea deals for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants A US official said during the 9/11 attacks.
The decision implements agreements that would have the three men plead guilty to one of the deadliest attacks ever in the United States in exchange for the possibility of the death penalty being spared. Al-Qaida attacks killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001, and fueled the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the George W. Bush administration called the war on terror.
The military The appeals court released its ruling On Monday night, the US official said he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Military prosecutors and defense lawyers for Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the attacks, and the two defendants reached deals after two years of negotiations approved by the government. The agreements were announced at the end of last summer.
Supporters of the plea deal see it as a way to resolve the tangled legal case against the US military commission’s men at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. The previous trials of Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi have been ongoing for more than a decade.
The focus of previous arguments has been how Torture of men while in CIA custody the first years after arrest may contaminate the overall evidence in the case.
A few days after learning of this summer’s plea deal, Austin issued a brief injunction saying was being cancelled.
He cited the seriousness of the 9/11 attacks as defense secretary, saying he would have to decide on plea deals that would prevent defendants from being executed.
Defense lawyers said Austin had no legal authority to overrule a decision already approved by senior Guantanamo court officials and said the move was an illegal intervention in the case.
The military judge hearing the 9/11 case, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, agreed that Austin had no merit in throwing out plea bargains after they were launched. This set the stage for the Department of Defense to appeal to the military court.
Austin now has the option of taking his effort to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. There was no immediate word from the Pentagon on the next move.
