The US Secretary of Defense has rescinded the negotiated agreement to convict Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered the “mastermind” of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Pentagon announced.
The decision also applies to the two co-defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, who are being held at the US military base in Guantanamo, Cuba, and who were included in the agreement to avoid the death penalty.
“I have decided, given the importance of the decision to enter into pre-trial sentencing agreements (…), that the responsibility for such a decision should be mine,” Lloyd Austin said in a brief note released on Friday.
The agreement announced Wednesday shocked many of the families of the estimated 3,000 victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
“Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I am revoking the three negotiated sentencing agreements” signed Wednesday, Austin said.
The deal on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has avoided a trial in which he could be sentenced to death in exchange for life imprisonment, according to American media.
The three men are accused of terrorism and the murder of some 3,000 people in the September 11, 2001 attacks carried out by Al-Qaida in New York and Washington, in one of the most traumatic episodes in the history of the United States.
They were never tried, as the process was blocked by the question of whether the torture they were subjected to in secret CIA prisons contaminated the prosecution’s evidence.
In March 2022, lawyers for the detainees confirmed that negotiations were underway with a view to a possible sentencing agreement, rather than appearing before the Guantanamo military tribunal.
In particular, the defendants wanted guarantees that they would remain at Guantanamo, where they have been held since 2003, rather than being transferred to a federal penitentiary on the North American mainland in solitary confinement.
Source: Observadora
