WASHINGTON — A military judge ruled that Plea deals reached by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants are valid, canceling an order from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to cancel the agreementsa 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 released or officially announced.
Plea deals would spare Mohammed and others the risk of the death penalty in exchange for guilty pleas in the long-running 9/11 case. Government prosecutors negotiated the deals with defense attorneys under government auspices, and the top official at the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, approved them.
Outcry over plea deal for 9/11 defendants
The plea agreements in the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, provoked an immediate political backlash from Republican lawmakers and others when they were announced in late July .
The agreements, and Austin’s attempt to cancel them, was one of the busiest episodes in a U.S. trial marked by delays and legal difficulties, including years of ongoing preliminary hearings to determine the admissibility of the defendants’ statements given their years of torture in CIA custody.
Days after the agreements were made public this summer, Austin issued a brief order saying he was rescinding them. Plea negotiations in potential death penalty cases related to one of the most serious crimes ever committed on American soil were a momentous step that should only be decided by the secretary of defense, Austin told the era.
The Pentagon is reviewing the judge’s ruling and had no immediate further comment, said Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary.
The New York Times was first to report the decision.
Military officials have not yet published the judge’s decision on the Guantanamo Military Commission’s online site.
However, a legal blog that has long covered prosecutions in the Guantanamo courtroom said McCall’s 29-page ruling concluded that Austin did not have the authority to void the plea deals.
The ruling also calls Austin’s timing “fatal,” coming after Guantanamo’s top official had already approved the deals, according to the Lawdragon blog.
