WASHINGTON — The military judge decided that Plea agreements reached by alleged September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants. they are valid, they are not Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's order to scrap the dealssaid a government official on Wednesday.
This officer spoke on the condition that he not be named because the order of the judge, Col. Matthew McCall, you have not been publicly listed or officially announced.
Plea agreements will save Mohammed and others the risk of the death penalty in exchange for a guilty plea in the long-running 9/11 case. Federal prosecutors negotiated deals with federal defense attorneys, and the top military commission official at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, approved them.
Appeal of plea agreement for 9/11 defendants
Claims of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people caused political backlash from Republican lawmakers and others when they were announced in late July.
The treaties, and Austin's attempt to reverse them, it was one of the most crowded episodes in a US prosecution characterized by delays and legal difficulties, including years of ongoing trials to obtain the admissibility of statements from defendants given their years of torture in CIA custody.
Within days of the deals becoming public this summer, Austin issued an executive order canceling them. Plea deals for potential death row convicts in one of the worst crimes ever committed on US soil were an important step that should be decided only by the secretary of defense, Austin said at the time.
The Pentagon is reviewing the judge's decision and has no further comment, said Maj. General Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary.
The New York Times first reported on the decision.
Military officials have not posted the judge's decision on the Guantanamo military commission's website.
However, a legal blog that has long covered Guantanamo court prosecutions said McCall's 29-page decision concluded that Austin did not have the authority to overturn the plea deals.
The decision also called the timing of Austin's departure “dangerous,” coming after Guantanamo's top official had already agreed to the deals, according to a blog, called Lawdragon.
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