Court pauses plea deal for 9/11 mastermind KSM: 23 years later, justice for terrorists delayed again

A federal appeals court has delayed a military tribunal hearing scheduled for Friday where alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-conspirators were expected to plead guilty as part of a negotiated agreement with prosecutors.

The pause, while welcomed by many who opposed the plea deals, extends a decades-long crusade for justice by the victims’ families.

The declaration agreements, which would have three September 11 terrorists avoid the death penalty and face life in prison, have sparked a public outcry and even sparked a scramble within the Biden administration to get rid of them.

On New Year’s Eve, a military appeals court struck down Defense Secretary Lloyd Austineffort to block the deal between military prosecutors and defense attorneys, saying Austin did not have the power to cancel plea deals.

Then, on Wednesday, the Department of Justice appealed this sentence.

Specifically, the judicial opinion said the plea agreements that military prosecutors and defense attorneys reached were valid and enforceable and that Austin exceeded his authority when he later sought to overturn them.

The defense now has until Jan. 17 to provide a full response to the Justice Department’s request to reject the plea deals. Government prosecutors then have until Jan. 22 for a rejoinder, with possible oral arguments on the matter to follow.

The plea deals, offered to Mohammed and two co-conspirators, were a way to end the quest for justice for those who have waited more than two decades to see the terrorists who killed their loved ones convicted. They would allow prosecutors to avoid going to trial.

But why did the government do it settle for a plea deal after 23 years building a case in the first place?

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“I haven’t spoken to a single person who thinks these plea deals are a good idea. Most people are appalled,” said Brett Eagleson, president of 9/11 Justice.

“Our thinking is that this was rescinded in name only and the way it was done right before the election. So Austin was trying to save any attempt at a political loss on this,” Eagleson said.

In its appeal this week, the government says, “Respondents are accused of perpetrating the most egregious criminal act on American soil in modern history: the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“The military commission judge intends to enforce pretrial plea agreements that will deprive the government and the American people of a public trial of the respondents’ guilt and the possibility of capital punishment, despite the fact that the Secretary of Defense has legally withdrawn these agreements,” the appeal said. 10 January 2025”.

The appeal also noted that once the military commission accepts the guilty pleas, there is likely no way to return to the status quo.

Defense attorneys for the alleged 9/11 perpetrators argued that Austin’s attempts to reject plea deals that his own military negotiated and approved were the latest developments in “mismanagement” and “negligent” of the case that has dragged on for more than two years. decades

If the plea deal is upheld, the perpetrators of the attacks that killed 2,976, plus thousands more who died after inhaling toxic dust on rescue missions, will not be put to death for their crimes.

“You’d think the government has a chance to get it right, and you’d think they’d be salivating at the chance to get us justice,” Eagleson said. “Instead of doing that, they surround everything in secrecy. They rush into these plea deals and move forward despite our objections.

“We want transparency. We want discovery that happened. In this case, we want to know who are these guys who are they talking to? On what grounds does our government believe these guys are guilty? Why can’t they share them? that with us? It’s been 23 years. You can’t tell me you need to protect the sources and methods of national security because we’re using the same sources and methods we had 23 years ago, we have bigger fish for fry”.

The government chose to try five men in one case rather than each individually. Mohammed is accused of directing the plot and proposing it to Usama bin Laden. Two other people helped the kidnappers with the finances.

In 2023, a medical panel concluded that Ramzi bin al-Shibh was not competent to stand trial and took it out of the case. Mohammed, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Walid bin Attash are part of the plea deal that will allow them to avoid the death penalty. Another will go to trial.

“The military commission has really been a failure,” said John Ryan, a retired agent with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York.

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Hundreds of people have been convicted of terrorism charges in the US Ramzi Yousef, the perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was convicted in 1997.

But the military commission’s 9/11 case has faced a revolving door of judges, who then take time to catch up on the case’s 400,000 pages and exhibits. Air Force Col. Matthew N. McCall, the fourth judge to preside over hearings in the case, plans to retire in the first quarter of 2025 before any trial begins.

McCall was assigned to the case in August 2021 and held only two rounds of hearings before suspending proceedings in March 2022 for release negotiations. Another judge would have to catch up, and it could be another five to 10 years before a conviction, according to Ryan, who observed many of the hearings at Guantánamo.

“You have parents and grandparents (of victims) who are now in their 80s, you know, and they want to see justice in their lifetime,” he said.

“So they would prefer to see the death penalty, but they accept the plea deal.”

In the 23 years it has taken to go to trial, critical witnesses have died, while others have fading memories of that fateful day.

For many years, the trial was delayed as the prosecution and defense argued over whether some of the government’s best evidence, obtained under torture by the CIA, was allowed in the courts. The defense argued that their clients had been conditioned to say whatever the interrogators liked under this practice.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder has accused “political pirates” of obstructing a trial in the United States and thus leading to the plea deal.

Years of procedures in the untested military commission system have led to countless delays.

Holder in 2009 had wanted to try the men in the Manhattan court system and vowed to seek the death penalty, but faced swift opposition in Congress from lawmakers opposed to bringing suspected terrorists to American soil.

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In 2013, Holder claimed that Mohammed and his co-conspirators would be sitting on “death row as we speak” if the case had gone through the federal court system as he proposed.

Ten years later, Attorney General William Barr also sought to bring Guantánamo detainees to the US for trial in federal court in 2019. He wrote in his memoirs that the military commission process had become a ” hopeless mess.”

“The military just can’t seem to get out of their way and complete the trial,” Barr wrote. He, too, faced opposition from Republicans in Congress and then-President Trump.