Secretary of Defense rescinds plea deals with alleged Sept. 11 planners

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has rescinded the plea deal reached with three Sept. 11 attack defendants, including alleged mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, reinstating them as death penalty cases.

In a memo published Friday night, Austin wrote that he has withdrawn the Department of Defense from pretrial agreements reached with Mohammed, as well as two alleged accomplices, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.

Letters sent to families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the al-Qaida attacks said the plea agreement stipulated the three would serve life sentences.

Some families 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 it had no knowledge of it.

Austin wrote in the order 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.

The U.S. military commission overseeing the cases of five defendants in the Sept. 11 attacks have been stuck in pre-trial hearings and other preliminary court action since 2008. The torture that the defendants underwent while in CIA custody has slowed 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. The plea deal had been announced Wednesday.

Next month will mark 23 years since the Sept. 11 attacks, where militants hijacked four commercial airliners to use as fuel-filled missiles, flying three of them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

Al-Qaida hijackers headed the fourth plane to Washington, but crew members and passengers tried to storm the cockpit, and the plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field.

Austin’s agreement also removed retired Brig. Gen. Susan Escallier, the convening authority overseeing the Pentagon’s military commissions, from the cases. Escallier signed off on the plea agreements.