Plea Deal Falls Apart for Accused 9/11 Masterminds
On August 2, 2024, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin revoked a plea agreement that military lawyers reached with three high-profile detainees accused in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. As a result, they will soon mark 22 years of confinement without criminal conviction—breaking a core promise of the U.S. Constitution.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi are detained at “Camp Justice,” which was set up in 2002 to hold suspected terrorists inside the U.S. Naval Station at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay. All three are charged with aiding and abetting 19 terrorists, who hijacked and crashed passenger planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing 2,977 people. They face the death penalty if convicted by the military tribunal.
Before arriving in Cuba, the three were held incommunicado after their 2003 capture in a secret CIA prison network, where they were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times, kept nude and deprived of sleep, while his diet was manipulated and he was subjected to other violence. Hawsawi suffered rectal damage from his enhanced CIA interrogations. All three detainees were re-interrogated by the FBI using more traditional methods in 2007 after arriving at Guantanamo.
The defendants were arraigned before a military tribunal in 2012, but their cases have been mired in pre-trial proceedings ever since. Defense lawyers have vigorously contested admission of the suspects’ confessions to the FBI, arguing that they were tainted by torture that the men endured at the clandestine CIA “black” sites. Defense lawyers have also argued that the Government should disclose more of the evidence it claims to possess against them, which is classified top secret.
On July 31, 2024, Brig. Gen. Susan K. Escallier (U.S. Army Ret.), who oversees the Pentagon’s Guantanamo war court, approved the plea agreement between the detainees’ lawyers and the government, in which the three suspects would plead guilty to conspiracy charges in exchange for a life sentence rather than the death penalty. The plea agreement was hailed as a significant step forward by many legal advocates worried there is no way to fairly try the men.
“It means a lot,” said Karen Greenberg, the director of the Center on National Security at the Fordham University School of Law. “It means that this trial, which has been put off for 12 years, will not happen. The issue has been resolved with this plea deal. It means the idea of bringing Guantanamo to closure is one step closer.”
J. Wells Dixon, a staff lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights who has represented defendants at Guantanamo, also welcomed the plea bargain as the only feasible way to resolve the long-stalled and legally fraught 9/11 cases. However, not everyone was happy with the plea deals, which sparked outrage among family members of some 9/11 victims, as well as Republican lawmakers who want to see the defendants face the death penalty.
On August 2, 2024, just two days after Escallier approved the deal, Austin sent her a memo stating: “I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024 in the above-referenced case.” Austin also revoked Escallier’s authority to approve further plea bargains, writing that “in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused … responsibility for such a decision should rest with me.”
Following Austin’s announcement, attorney Dixon accused him of “bowing to political pressure and pushing some victim family members over an emotional cliff” by rescinding the plea deals. Others, however, applauded the decision.
Austin said that rescinding the plea offer “wasn’t a decision that I took lightly” but was necessitated by the significant loss that occurred on 9/11. “I have long believed that the families of the victims, our service members, and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commissions, commission trials carried out,” he said.
The status of the three cases remains unclear. No trial date has been set, and the military judge who has overseen proceedings since 2021, U.S. Air Force Col. Matthew N. McCall, has announced his retirement later this year. Meanwhile, Austin is on his way out in January 2025, when Pres.-elect Donald J. Trump (R) takes office and his pick for Defense Secretary, TV host Pete Hegseth, assumes the top post at the Pentagon.
Sources: New York Times, Al Jazeera