Pentagon cancels plea deal for 9/11 mastermind

In a note, the Minister of Defense also added that he was revoking the authority of the senior official who was supervising this matter.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday, August 2, revoked the plea agreement negotiated for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, called ‘KSM’ (S for Sheikh in English), considered the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The agreement announced Wednesday shocked many relatives of the 3,000 victims and sparked fierce criticism. The text allowed the Pakistani, raised in Kuwait, to avoid a trial where he would have faced the death penalty, in exchange for a life sentence. There revocation is effective for two other co-accused: Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.

“I have decided, given the importance of the decision to enter into pre-trial plea agreements with the defendants (…), that the responsibility for such a decision should rest with me.”explains the minister in a brief note. In his memo, the Secretary of Defense also added that he was revoking the authority of Susan K. Escallier, who oversaw the case as the Defense Department’s senior official for military commissions, over the three cases he is taking up.

Although “KSM” did not initially enlist in Al-Qaeda, the official 9/11 report described him as“terrorist entrepreneur”who had the motivations and ideas for attacks, but not the funds and organization necessary to carry them out. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,is touted by investigators as having planned and organized the deadliest attacks in history. He has been languishing in a cell at Guantanamo for 18 years.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi have never been tried, as the process of bringing them to trial has been bogged down by the question of whether the torture they suffered in secret CIA prisons tainted the evidence against them. In March 2022, the prisoners’ lawyers confirmed that negotiations were underway for a possible plea bargain. The defendants were seeking, in particular, a guarantee that they would remain at Guantanamo, rather than being transferred to a federal penitentiary on the mainland in solitary confinement.