US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked plea deals with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other accomplices. The agreements that were reached earlier this week involved guilty pleas in exchange of life sentences for the trio.
The two other defendants are Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi. The deal was announced by the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, earlier this week and the trio was set to formally enter their pleas next week.
Who is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is one of most infamous inmates in the Guantanamo Bay prison, is accused of masterminding the conspiracy to fly hijacked commercial passenger planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, resulting in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's move to nullify the deals and reinstate them as death penalty cases comes after some families of the attack's victims condemned the deal as it would deny them chances of a full trial. Republican lawmakers like House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also slammed the plea agreement.
However, the Joe Biden administraton said it had no knowledge of the deal, following which Pentagon chief overrode the military panel's decision.
The pre-trial hearings and other preliminary court proceedings have been in a limbo since 2008 due to inadmissibility of evidence linked to the torture inflicted on the accused under CIA custody.
