WASHINGTON —
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Friday overrode a plea agreement reached this week for the man accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as well as two other defendants, reinstating them as death penalty cases.
The move comes two days after the U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, announced it had reached plea deals with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and two accused accomplices, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa Hawsawi, in the attacks.
Overseen by the military commission, the cases of five defendants in the Sept. 11 attacks have been stuck in pretrial hearings and other preliminary court action since 2008. The torture that the defendants underwent while in CIA custody slowed the cases and left the prospect of full trials and verdicts uncertain, in part because of the inadmissibility of evidence linked to the torture.
Letters sent to families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Al Qaeda attacks said the plea agreement stipulated the three would serve life sentences.
Some relatives of the attack’s victims condemned the deal for cutting off any possibility of full trials and possible death penalties. Republicans were quick to fault the Biden administration for the deal, although the White House said after it was announced that it had no knowledge of it.
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 the agreements.
Mohammed and the other defendants had been expected to formally enter their pleas under the deal as soon as next week.
Knickmeyer writes for the Associated Press.