Biden Administration trying to block death sentence plea deal for 9/11 ‘architect’

A last-minute attempt to block a plea deal for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that would spare him the death penalty for allegedly masterminding the 9/11 attacks is under way.

Al-Qa’ida's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged organiser of the September 11, 2001 attacks at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2009. Picture: AFP

The Biden administration is ­making a last-minute attempt to block a plea deal for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that would spare him the death penalty for allegedly masterminding the 9/11 attacks.

Lawyers from the US Department of Justice told an appeals court the government would be “irreparably harmed” if guilty pleas were accepted for Mohammed and two co-defendants over the atrocity on September 11, 2001.

Mohammed, 59, is due to lodge his guilty plea on Friday over war crimes ­charges in return for a jail sentence, in line with an agreement struck with the Pentagon last July. Many victims’ families were outraged and senior government officials have been trying to reverse the deal ever since.

As it stands, the man named “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks” in the 9/11 Commission Report would be spared a trial and a possibility of capital punishment.

The agreements for Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, 46, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, 56, followed two years of negotiations to overcome an impasse in trial proceedings at the US military com­mission at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. The other two ­alleged plotters are due to make their guilty pleas next week.

The men were captured in 2003 and moved to Guantanamo Bay in 2006. Pre-trial arguments focused on how torture of the men during their first years in CIA custody could taint evidence against them.

It comes despite President Joe Biden moving to commute almost all outstanding federal death sentences before he leaves office a week on Monday.

The DoJ said the government would be denied a chance for a public trial and the opportunity to “seek capital punishment against three men charged with a heinous act of mass murder that caused the death of thousands of people and shocked the nation and the world”.

Military prosecutors from the defence department were authorised to negotiate and approve the plea deal but Lloyd Austin, the Defence Secretary, repudiated it.

Within 48 hours, he began the administration’s efforts to throw it out.

A military judge at Guantan­amo Bay and a military appeals panel rejected his attempts, ruling that he had no power to throw out the agreement after it had been ­approved by the senior Pentagon official for Guantanamo Bay.

Victims’ family members are split on the deal, with some seeing it as the best resolution possible in the circumstances while others want a trial and the potential of ­execution.

The Times