Pentagon chief loses bid to reject 9/11 plea deals

WASHINGTON (AP) — A military appeals court has ruled against Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s attempt to dismiss the Plea Agreements Reached for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Two Other Defendants in the 9/11 attacks, a US official said.

the decision get agreements back on track That would make the three men plead guilty to one of the deadliest attacks ever committed in the United States in exchange for avoiding the possibility of the death penalty. Al Qaeda attacks killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, and helped spur the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in what the George W. Bush administration called its war on terrorism.

the military appeals court issued its ruling Monday night, according to the U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Military prosecutors and defense attorneys for Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks, and two co-defendants reached plea deals after two years of government-approved negotiations. The deals were announced late last summer.

Supporters of the plea deal see it as a way to resolve the troubled legal case against the U.S. military commission men at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. The pre-trial hearings for Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi have been underway for more than a decade.

Much of the focus of pretrial arguments has been on how Torture of the men while in CIA custody. in the first years after their arrest they can taint the overall evidence of the case.

Within days of news of the plea deal this summer, Austin issued a brief order saying I was canceling them.

He cited the severity of the 9/11 attacks in saying that as Secretary of Defense, he should decide on any plea deals that would spare the defendants the possibility of being executed.

Defense attorneys said Austin had no legal authority to reject a decision already approved by the top judge at the Guantánamo court and said the move amounted to unlawful interference in the case.

The military judge who heard the 9/11 case, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, agreed that Austin lacked standing to throw out the plea deals once they were underway. That had led to the Defense Department’s appeal to the military appeals court.

Austin now has the option of seeking to have the plea agreements thrown out before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. There was no immediate word from the Pentagon on the next step.