The US has revoked plea deals with 9/11 accused, including mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which would have spared them the death penalty. This decision was made by US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, who relieved Susan Escallier of her authority to reach pre-trial agreements in the case and took on the responsibility himself. In a memo, Austin stated, “Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I at this moment withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements.”
The revocation came just two days after Mohammed and two of his accomplices, held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, agreed to plead guilty. The plea deals, which almost certainly involved guilty pleas in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, drew sharp criticism from several Republican legislators, including House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Mohammed is the most well-known inmate at Guantanamo Bay, a facility set up in 2002 by then-US President George W. Bush to house terror suspects following the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The other two detainees who reached plea deals were Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi. The Pentagon stated that the three men were initially charged jointly and arraigned on June 5, 2008, and again charged jointly and prosecuted a second time on May 5, 2012.
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