A US appeals court has rejected a controversial deal that would have allowed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to plead guilty in exchange for escaping execution for al-Qaeda’s 2001 terror attacks.
In a 2-1 decision Friday by the US Court of Appeals for Washington, DC, the panel upheld former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s decision to undo a 2023 plea deal approved by military lawyers and senior Pentagon that would have carried life-without-parole sentences for Mohammed and two co-defendants.
“The Secretary of Defense indisputably had legal authority to withdraw from the agreements,” court papers said.
“The plain and unambiguous text of the pretrial agreements shows that no performance of promises had begun [and] the government has no adequate alternative remedy to vindicate its interests.”
Mohammed, or KSM as he is better known, was al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s operational planner and hatched the scheme of using hijacked planes as missiles in the US that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
He’s accused of mastering the plot to crash airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another of the hijacked planes, redirected toward Washington, was taken down in a Pennsylvania field by passengers on board.
The ruling quashes an attempt to wrap up more than two decades of military prosecution stymied by legal and logistical troubles.
Relatives of Sept. 11 victims had mixed feelings about the plea deal.
Some opposed it, saying a trial is the best path to justice and learning more information about the attacks.
Others saw it as the best hope for bringing the painful case to a conclusion and getting answers from the defendants.
The plea deal would have required the men to answer any lingering questions families of the victims had about the horrific attacks.
Austin rejected the deal in August, saying a decision on the death penalty in an attack as grave as on 9/11 should only be made by the defense secretary.
The defendant’s lawyers argued the agreement was already legally in effect and that Austin, who served under President Biden, acted too late.
A military judge at Guantanamo and a military appeals panel agreed with the defense lawyers.
But the appellate panel’s majority found Austin acted within his authority and faulted the military judge’s ruling.
“Having properly assumed the convening authority, the Secretary determined that the ‘families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out.’ The Secretary acted within the bounds of his legal authority, and we decline to second-guess his judgment,” judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao wrote.
Millett was an appointee of former President Obama while Rao was appointed by President Trump.
Judge Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, wrote in his dissent, “The government has not come within a country mile of proving clearly and indisputably that the Military Judge erred.”
Brett Eagleson, who was among the family members who opposed the deal, called the appellate ruling “a good win, for now.”
“A plea deal allows this to be tucked away into a nice, pretty package, wrapped into a bow and put on a shelf and forgotten about,” said Eagleson, who was 15 when his father, shopping center executive John Bruce Eagleson, was killed.
Brett Eagleson said he was unmoved by the deal’s provisions for the defendants to answer 9/11 families’ questions because he has serious doubts about what information they will actually turn over.
Elizabeth Miller, who was just six-years-old when her father, firefighter Douglas Miller, was killed in the attacks, was among those who supported the deal.
“Of course, growing up, a trial would have been great initially,” Miller, who opposes the death penalty, said. But “we’re in 2025, and we’re still at the pretrial stage.”
“I just really don’t think a trial is possible.”
With Post wire services.
