Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin overrides plea deal for 9/11 defendants
FILE - U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin participates in a news briefing at the Pentagon on July 25, 2024 in Arlington, Virginia. (Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has overridden a plea agreement that was reached for the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and two other defendants that was reached earlier this week, reinstatement them as death penalty cases.
The change comes just two days after the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, announced it had reached plea deals with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two accused accomplices in the terror attacks.
Austin wrote in an order released Friday night that "in light of the significance of the decision," he had decided that the authority to make a decision on accepting the plea agreements was his. He nullified Escallier's approval.
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The U.S. military commission overseeing the cases of five defendants in the Sept. 11 attacks has been stuck in pre-trial hearings and other preliminary court action since 2008. The torture that the defendants underwent while in CIA custody has been among the challenges slowing the cases, and left the prospect of full trials and verdicts still uncertain, in part because of the inadmissibility of evidence linked to the torture.
Lawyers for the two sides have been exploring a negotiated resolution to the case for about 1 1/2 years. President Joe Biden blocked an earlier proposed plea bargain in the case last year, when he refused to offer requested presidential guarantees that the men would be spared solitary confinement and provided trauma care for the torture they underwent while in CIA custody.
A fourth Sept. 11 defendant at Guantanamo had been still negotiating on a possible plea agreement.
The military commission last year ruled the fifth defendant mentally unfit to stand trial. A military medical panel cited post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis, and linked it to torture and solitary confinement in four years in CIA custody before transfer to Guantanamo.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. This story was reported from Los Angeles.