The Supreme Court sided with the Pentagon on Monday in its decision to revoke a plea deal with three alleged terrorists tied to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that would have taken the death penalty off the table in exchange for life in prison.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mustafa al Hawsawi, and Walid bin ‘Attash were challenging Biden-era Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s decision in 2024 to withdraw from the agreements that they made with the department, under which they agreed to serve a life sentence in exchange for removing the possibility of getting the death penalty.
The Supreme Court did not provide an explanation in its decision on Monday.
The plea deals were approved in 2024 by Susan Escallier, a retired brigadier general whom Austin appointed to oversee the military commissions’ handling of the detention cases. Only days after the agreements were announced, Austin assured himself to overturn the deals.
A military judge ruled Austin acted too late, and the three suspects had already begun the tasks involved in the deal. A military appellate court upheld that decision, and so the government turned to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which allowed the withdrawal on a 2-1 vote.
A military judge in August scheduled a June 2028 trial date for Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attack. The judge also ruled that Mohammed’s 2007 confession to FBI agents was not voluntary and excluded it from evidence in his long-delayed case. Mohammed has been held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth, who served at Guantanamo Bay for a year, traveled to the base at the start of his tenure, and he visited Mohammed. When asked how Mohammed looked, Hegseth said, “I don’t really care,” and he added, “But he’s fine, and I hope he finds justice soon. This is one of the rare things I agree with my predecessor on, Lloyd Austin, that he deserves the death penalty, and I hope he finds it soon, through that system.”
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There are currently 15 detainees still at Guantanamo Bay, nearly 25 years after it opened. Of those 15, three of them — Guled Hassan Duran, Ismail Ali Faraj Ali Bakush, and Muieen A Deen Jamal-A Deen Abd al Fusal Abd al Sattar — are eligible to be transferred out of the detention center and returned to their native country. Only two of those remaining 12 detainees have been convicted, and seven have been charged, though not all of them face allegations tied to the Sept. 11 attacks.
The legal cases involving the remaining detainees have been plagued by repeated delays and losses for the prosecution, and several confessions have been thrown out due to CIA torture.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
