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Defense Secretary Revokes Plea Deal for Accused Sept. 11 Plotters [1]

['Carol Rosenberg']

Date: 2024-08-02

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Friday overruled the overseer of the war court at Guantánamo Bay and revoked a plea agreement reached earlier this week with the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two alleged accomplices.

The Pentagon announced the decision with a memorandum relieving the senior Defense Department official responsible for military commissions of her oversight of the capital case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his alleged accomplices for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.

The overseer, retired Brig. Gen. Susan K. Escallier, signed a pretrial agreement on Wednesday with Mr. Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi that exchanged guilty pleas for sentences of at most life in prison.

In taking away the authority, Mr. Austin assumed direct oversight of the case and canceled the agreement, effectively reinstating it as a death-penalty case. He left Ms. Escallier in the role of oversight of Guantánamo’s other cases.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/us/politics/911-plotters-plea-deal.html

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