Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday revoked plea deals previously agreed to with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and two accomplices held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Pentagon announced on Wednesday that plea deals had been reached but did not provide details. A U.S. official indicated that the agreements likely involved guilty pleas in exchange for removing the death penalty.
However, on Friday, Austin relieved Susan Escallier, who oversees the Pentagon’s Guantanamo war court, of her authority to enter into pre-trial agreements and assumed the responsibility himself. “Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements,” Austin wrote in a memo.
The plea deals had faced strong criticism from many Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the most well-known inmate at Guantanamo Bay, a detention facility established in 2002 by then-President George W. Bush to house foreign militant suspects following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mohammed is accused of orchestrating the plot to fly hijacked commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon. The attacks, known as 9/11, killed nearly 3,000 people and led to the United States’ two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.
Plea deals had also been reached with two other detainees: Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.
