US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday revoked the plea deal negotiated for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered the “mastermind” of the September 11, 2001 attacks, taking up the case “given the importance of this decision,” according to a memo released by the Pentagon.
The revocation is effective for the two co-defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, detained at the US military base at Guantánamo and covered by the agreement that spared them the death penalty.
“I have decided, given the importance of the decision, to enter into pre-trial plea agreements with the accused […]that the responsibility for such a decision should fall on me,” the minister explains in a brief note.
The agreement announced Wednesday shocked many relatives of the nearly 3,000 victims of September 11.
He added that he was revoking the authority of Susan K. Escallier, who oversaw the case as the Defense Department’s top official for military commissions, over the three cases he is taking up.
“With immediate effect, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby revoke the three negotiated sentence agreements signed on Wednesday,” it said.
The agreement concerning him notably allowed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to avoid a trial where he would face the death penalty, in exchange for a sentence of life imprisonment, according to American media.
The three men are accused of terrorism and the murder of nearly 3,000 people in the attacks in New York and Washington, one of the most traumatic episodes in the history of the United States.
They were never tried, with proceedings to bring them to trial bogged down over whether the torture they suffered in secret CIA prisons tainted the evidence against them.
In March 2022, lawyers for the prisoners confirmed that negotiations were underway for a possible plea bargain, rather than a trial before the military tribunal at Guantánamo.
The defendants sought, in particular, a guarantee that they would remain in Guantánamo, rather than being transferred to a federal penitentiary on the American continent, in solitary confinement.