WASHINGTON – That was determined by a military judge plea deals struck by alleged September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants are valid, invalid an order from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to reject the dealsa government official said Wednesday.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the order from the judge, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, has not yet been publicly posted or officially announced.
The plea deals would spare Mohammed and the others the risk of the death penalty in exchange for guilty pleas in the long-running September 11 case. Government prosecutors had negotiated the deals with lawyers under government auspices, and the top official of the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had approved them.
Outrage over plea deal for 9/11 suspects
The plea centers on al-Qaeda’s attacks on September 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people and were announced in late July, prompting immediate political backlash from Republican lawmakers and others.
The agreements, and Austin’s attempt to undo them, have been one of the most charged episodes in a U.S. prosecution marked by delays and legal challenges, including years of protracted pretrial hearings to determine the admissibility of defendants’ statements given their years of torture in CIA custody.
Within days of the deals being made public this summer, Austin issued a brief order saying he was annulling them. Plea deals in potential death penalty cases related to one of the most serious crimes ever committed on U.S. soil were a momentous step that should be decided by the Secretary of Defense alone, Austin said at the time.
The Pentagon is reviewing the judge’s decision and had no immediate further comment, said Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary.
The New York Times first reported the ruling.
Military officials have yet to post the judge’s decision on the Guantanamo military commission’s online site.
However, a legal blog that has long reported on the prosecutions from the Guantánamo courtroom says McCall’s 29-page ruling concludes that Austin did not have the authority to reject the plea deals.
The ruling also calls the timing of Austin’s move “fatal,” after Guantanamo’s top official had already approved the deals, according to the blog, called Lawdragon.
