The suspected mastermind of the U.S September 11, 2001 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and two of his co-defendants were denied the opportunity to enter guilty pleas under arrangement that would have spared them from the death penalty by an appeals court on Friday.
After two decades of legal stalemate, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (DC) Circuit ruled 2-1, upending an attempt to stop a military prosecution of the three detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
After Republican senators criticised the plea deals, then-defense secretary Lloyd Austin canceled them in August 2024.
The plea deals had been proposed in 2024 and approved by the man in charge of the Pentagon’s Guantanamo war court.
However, in December 2024, the US Court of Military Commission Review upheld a military judge’s ruling that Mr. Austin lacked the jurisdiction to invalidate the plea deals. Prompt plea hearings were then scheduled by the judge.
At the request of the administration of former Democratic President Joe Biden, the DC Circuit agreed to halt those proceedings while it considered the government’s legal appeal, which was pursued by the administration of Republican President Donald Trump.
US Circuit Judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao, writing for the majority, in the ruling on July 11 said Mr Austin “indisputably had legal authority to withdraw from the agreements”.
Judge Millett was appointed by Democratic president Barack Obama, while Judge Rao is a Trump appointee.
A lawyer for Mohammed and one of his co-defendants, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the Pentagon.
Mr Matthew Engle, an attorney for the third defendant, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin ‘Atash, said he was considering a potential further appeal, including to the US Supreme Court.
Mohammed is the most well-known inmate at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, which was set up in 2002 by then-US president George W. Bush to house foreign militant suspects following the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Mohammed is accused of masterminding the plot to fly hijacked commercial passenger aircraft into the World Trade Center in New York City and into the Pentagon.
The 9/11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people.
