Plea deals revived for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others

WASHINGTON — The military judge ruled that the plea agreements made by the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the two defendants were valid and invalidated the court’s decision. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to cancel agreementsa government official said on Wednesday.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the order from the judge, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, has not yet been publicly released or formally announced.

Unless government prosecutors or others attempt to challenge the plea deals again, McCall’s decision marks a dramatic step toward wrapping up the long-running case, where the three Sept. 11 defendants could soon plead guilty in a U.S. military courtroom at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It means they can throw it. An ongoing and legally troubled government investigation into one of the deadliest attacks on the United States.

The plea deals will spare Mohammed and two other defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, from the risk of the death penalty in exchange for a guilty plea.

Government prosecutors had negotiated the agreements with defense attorneys under government auspices, and the top official of the military commission at the Guantanamo Bay naval base had approved the agreements.

Plea agreements related to the Al Qaeda attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, sparked immediate political backlash from Republican lawmakers and others after they were made public this summer.

Within days, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a brief order saying he would override them. Austin said at the time that plea bargaining in possible death penalty cases connected to one of the most serious crimes committed on U.S. soil was a crucial step that should be decided solely by the secretary of defense.

The agreements and Austin’s attempt to overturn them constituted one of the most alarming cases in the United States, fraught with investigation delays and legal challenges. This included years of pre-trial hearings to determine the admissibility of the defendants’ statements about their years of torture under CIA custody.

Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said the Pentagon was reviewing the judge’s decision and had no further comment.

The New York Times first reported the decision.

Military officials have not yet published the judge’s decision on the Guantanamo military commission’s online site. But the legal blog, which has long covered cases in the Guantanamo courtroom, said McCall’s 29-page ruling concluded that Austin lacked the legal authority to revoke the plea deals.

The decision also calls the timing of Austin’s move “fatal” after Guantanamo’s top official had already approved the agreements, according to the blog Lawdragon.

The legal blog quotes McCall as saying in the ruling that complying with Austin’s order would give defense secretaries “absolute veto power” over any action they disagree with, which would run afoul of the president’s independence in the Guantanamo cases.

While the families of some of the victims and others are determined that 9/11 investigations should continue through to trial and possible death sentences, legal experts say it is not clear whether that will happen. If the 9/11 cases clear the hurdles to trials, verdicts, and sentences, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will likely hear most of the issues during any death penalty appeal.

The issues include the CIA’s destruction of interrogation videos, whether rescinding Austin’s plea deal constituted unlawful interference and whether the torture of the men tainted subsequent interrogations by nonviolent “clean squads” of FBI agents.

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AP writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.