Author: Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. military appeals court has ruled that plea deals involving a man accused of masterminding the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and two accomplices can go forward after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier decided to overturn the deals.
In August, Austin rescinded the plea deals the Pentagon struck with the three, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
In November, a US military judge ruled that Austin overturned the plea deals too late and that they were still valid. An order issued late Monday by a US military appeals court upheld that ruling.
The Pentagon declined to comment. It was previously said that Austin was surprised by the plea deals and that the secretary was not consulted because the process is independent.
Under the deal, it is possible that the three men could plead guilty to the attacks and in exchange not face the death penalty.
Mohammed is the most famous prisoner in the US detention facility known as Guantanamo Bay on the coast of Cuba. It was established in 2002 by then US President George W. Bush to detain suspected foreign militants after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
Mohammed is accused of planning a plot to fly a hijacked commercial airliner into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. The 9/11 attacks, as they are known, killed nearly 3,000 people and plunged the US into a two-decade war in Afghanistan.
Human rights experts, including the United Nations, have condemned torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere during the so-called war on terror and demanded an apology from Washington. Former President Barack Obama admitted in 2014 that the US was involved in torture and said it was “contrary to our values”.
Separately on Monday, the Pentagon said that Ridah Bin Saleh Al-Yazidi, one of the longest-serving detainees at Guantanamo Bay, had been returned from the detention facility to his home country of Tunisia. They held him without charge for more than 20 years.
The Pentagon said 26 prisoners remain at the facility, 14 of whom are eligible for transfer.
