Biden administration tries to block plea deal for 9/11 ‘architect’
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The US government has filed a motion to prevent a military tribunal from accepting the plea agreements offered to three men accused of orchestrating the September 11, 2001 attacks.
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Courtroom drawing by artist Janet Hamlin and reviewed by the US military, shows Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, center, and co-defendant Walid Bin Attash, left, attending a pre-trial session at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, on December 8, 2008. (AP)
Times reported on Thursday that the Biden administration is making a final effort to prevent a plea deal for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, which would spare him the death penalty for allegedly orchestrating the 9/11 attacks.
As per the report, lawyers from the US Department of Justice (DoJ) informed an appeals court that the government would face "irreparable harm" if guilty pleas were accepted from Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and two co-defendants for their involvement in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 59, is set to enter a guilty plea on war crimes charges in exchange for a prison sentence on Friday, as part of an agreement made with the Pentagon last July. According to the report, the deal has sparked outrage among many victims' families, and senior government officials have been working to overturn it ever since.
As it stands, the man named “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks” in the 9/11 Commission Report would be spared a trial and any possibility of capital punishment.
The agreement for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, 46, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, 56, came after two years of negotiations aimed at resolving a deadlock in trial proceedings at the US military commission at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. The other two alleged plotters are expected to enter their pleas next week.
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The men were captured in 2003 and transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006. Pre-trial debates centered on whether the torture they endured during their initial years in CIA custody could compromise the evidence against them, as mentioned in the Times report.
According to the report, the trial is proceeding even though President Biden is working to commute nearly all remaining federal death sentences before he leaves office next Monday.
The DoJ said the government would be denied a chance for a public trial and the opportunity to “seek capital punishment against three men charged with a heinous act of mass murder that caused the death of thousands of people and shocked the nation and the world”.
Military prosecutors from the Department of Defense were given the authority to negotiate and approve the plea deal. However, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rejected it and, within 48 hours, initiated the administration's efforts to have it overturned.
According to the report, a military judge at Guantanamo Bay and a military appeals panel rejected his attempts, ruling that he had no power to throw out the agreement after it had been approved by the senior Pentagon official for Guantanamo Bay.
