The agreement with the Ministry of Defense has been legally enforced. The position of the defendants' lawyers is that the decision to impose the death penalty in a serious attack should be made only by the Secretary of Defense. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin
Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Washington (UrduPoint News International/ Latest News - International Press Agency. January 8, 2025) The Biden administration has asked a federal court to block a plea deal reached with the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and two other defendants because the deal would have spared them the death penalty in the trial. According to the American broadcaster, the Justice Department argued in a petition filed in a federal court in Washington, DC that if the guilty pleas of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks are accepted, the government would suffer irreparable harm.
The petition said that the government would not have the opportunity to seek a public trial and the death penalty against the three men accused of a horrific massacre that left thousands dead that shook the country and the world. The deal was made and approved by the Defense Department, but was later rejected. The defendants' lawyers say the agreement is legally binding and that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who began efforts to repeal it, took the step too late. When the appeal was filed, some of the families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the al-Qaeda attacks were already at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, to hear Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's scheduled plea on Friday. The other two men, who were charged with lesser roles in the attacks, were scheduled to give their pleas next week.
The deal has divided families. Some say it is the best solution for prosecutors who have been struggling with legal and logistical hurdles for more than a decade, while others have called for a trial and hoped the defendants would be sentenced to death. Some legal experts have warned that legal issues arising from the case, including allegations of torture in CIA custody after their capture, could potentially shield the elderly detainees from any verdict or possible sentence.
Military prosecutors notified families of the victims this summer that a senior Pentagon official overseeing Guantanamo had approved the plea deal after more than two years of negotiations. Military prosecutors say the deal is “final and the best path to justice,” but some family members and Republican lawmakers have criticized the deal and the Biden administration for negotiating it.
Lloyd Austin has tried unsuccessfully since August to end the deal, arguing that the death penalty should be decided only by the secretary of defense in a serious attack like the September 11 plot. A military judge at Guantanamo and a military appeals panel rejected those efforts, saying they had no authority to end the deal after it was approved by a senior Pentagon official for Guantanamo. Defense lawyers say Lloyd Austin’s plea deal request was approved by his own officials and military prosecutors and that his intervention was an illegal political interference in the justice system. The Justice Department said the short delay would not harm the defendants because the case has been ongoing since 2012 and the plea agreements would likely result in long prison sentences, possibly as long as life. The government argued that the short delay in the court’s ability to consider the merits of the government’s plea deal in this important case would not harm the defendants. The US Department of Justice criticized the military commission judge's decision, saying the judge improperly limited the defense secretary's authority. Describing the case as one of unique national importance, the government said that preserving this authority was essential and required extraordinary relief.
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