Judge sets date for defense of 9/11 defendants, deepening fight over court independence

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military judge at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ordered alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants to plead guilty in exchange for life sentences despite Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s efforts to thwart the investigation. He scheduled a hearing for early January. plea agreements

Air Force colonel Judge Matthew McCall’s move Wednesday into the government’s long-running investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people signals a deepening battle over the independence of the Sept. 11, 2001, military commission at the naval base. Guantanamo.

McCall tentatively scheduled plea hearings to take place within two weeks, starting January 6; Mohammed, the defendant accused of using commercial jet planes for the attacks, is expected to present his defense first if Austin’s efforts to prevent it fail.

Austin is trying to scrap deals for Muhammad and co-defendants Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi that would get the government’s more than 20-year investigative efforts back on track for a case that risks the death penalty.

While government prosecutors negotiated the plea deals for more than two years under the auspices of the Defense Department and won the necessary approval this summer from the top official overseeing Guantanamo investigations, the agreements drew angry condemnations from Sen. Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton and other dignitaries. Republicans when the news broke.

Within days, Austin issued an order canceling the agreements, saying the seriousness of the September 11 attacks meant that the defendants had to make the decision to waive the possibility of execution.

Defense attorneys argued that Austin had no legal basis to intervene and that his action amounted to outside interference that could call into question the legal validity of the proceedings at Guantanamo.

U.S. officials established a hybrid military commission, governed by a mix of civilian and military laws and rules, to try people arrested in what the George W. Bush administration called the “war on terror” after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Al Qaeda attack was one of the most damaging and deadly attacks on the United States in its history. Hijackers hijacked four passenger planes and flew them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon; the fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

McCall ruled last week that Austin had no legal basis to reject the plea deals and that his intervention was too late because it only made them valid after approval by the top official at Guantanamo.

McCall’s decision also confirmed that the government and Guantanamo’s top authority agreed to clauses in plea agreements for Muhammad and another defendant that prohibited authorities from re-seeking potential death sentences even if the plea agreements were later rescinded for any reason. The articles appeared pre-written to try to address the type of warfare currently taking place.

The Defense Department notified families Friday that it would continue to fight plea deals. In a letter to families of 9/11 victims, officials said they intended to block the defendants’ defense as well as challenge the agreements and McCall’s decision before the U.S. military commission review court.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday about whether it had filed an appeal.

While families of some of the victims and others are adamant that 9/11 investigations are ongoing 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 in 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.