Plea deals revived for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others

WASHINGTON – A military judge has ruled that plea deals struck by alleged September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants are valid, invalidating an order by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to reject the deals, an administration official said .

The official spoke on condition of anonymity Wednesday because the order from the judge, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, has not yet been publicly posted or officially announced.

Unless prosecutors or others again try to challenge the plea deals, McCall’s ruling means the three September 11 suspects could soon enter guilty pleas in the U.S. military courtroom at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, taking a dramatic step toward of completing the long-running lawsuit. ongoing and legally problematic government prosecution in one of the deadliest attacks on the United States.

The plea deals would spare Mohammed and two co-defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, the risk of the death penalty in exchange for the guilty pleas.

Government prosecutors had negotiated the deals with lawyers under government auspices, and the top official of the military commission at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base had approved the agreements.

The plea over the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people drew immediate political backlash from Republican lawmakers and others after they were made public this summer.

Within days, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a brief order saying he would nullify them. Plea deals in potential death penalty cases related to one of the most serious crimes ever committed on U.S. soil were a momentous step that should be decided by the Secretary of Defense alone, Austin said at the time.

The agreements, and Austin’s attempt to undo them, have led to one of the most fraught episodes in a U.S. prosecution, marked by delays and legal challenges. That includes years of ongoing pretrial hearings to determine the admissibility of the defendants’ statements given their years of torture in CIA custody.