9/11 Guilty Pleas Delayed After Government Opposition

The US government has managed to temporarily block the accused mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks from pleading guilty amid a dispute over the terms of a pre-trial agreement.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants reached deals last summer to plead guilty to all charges in exchange for not facing a death penalty trial.

In a filing with a federal appeals court, the government argued that it would suffer irreparable harm if the claims were accepted.

A three-judge panel said they needed more time to consider the case and stay the proceedings. They stressed that the delay “should in no way be interpreted as a decision on the merits” of the case.

It comes after a military judge and appeals panel rejected an earlier move by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to revoke agreementswhich had been signed by a senior official appointed by him.

Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks of September 11, 2001, when hijackers seized passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington. Another plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.

The three men have been in US custody for more than 20 years and pretrial hearings in the case have lasted more than a decade.

Arguments have centered on whether the evidence has been tainted by the torture the defendants suffered in CIA custody after their arrests.

Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding, or “waterboarding,” 183 times while held in secret CIA prisons following his arrest in 2003. Other so-called “advanced interrogation techniques” included sleep deprivation and forced nudity.

Families of some of those killed in the 9/11 attacks had criticized the agreements as being too lenient or lacking transparency, while others saw them as a way to move the complex and protracted case forward.

Those who had traveled to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to see Mohammed plead guilty were speaking to reporters when news of the delay was announced.

“The American government failed the families of 9/11 again. They had the opportunity to do the right thing and they chose not to,” said Tom Resta, whose brother, sister-in-law and unborn child were killed in the attacks.

The government had argued that moving ahead with the agreements would mean it would be denied the opportunity to “seek capital punishment against three men accused of a heinous act of mass murder that killed thousands of people and shocked the nation.” and to the world.”

“A brief delay to allow this Court to weigh the merits of the government’s request in this momentous case will not materially prejudice defendants,” he said.

In its response, Mohammed’s team said the deal offered “the first opportunity for genuine closure” in nearly a quarter of a century. He said the plea negotiations, which took place over two years, had “directly involved the White House.”

In its decision Thursday night, the federal appeals court said its decision was intended to give the justices time to receive a full brief and hear arguments “expeditiously.”

The delay means the matter will now fall to the incoming Trump administration.

Not all details of the agreements reached with Mohammed and two of his co-defendants have been made public.

At a court hearing in Guantánamo on Wednesday, his legal team confirmed that he had agreed to plead guilty to all charges.

If the agreements are confirmed and the court accepts the pleas, the next steps would be to appoint a military jury, known as a panel, to hear evidence at a sentencing hearing.

Lawyers described this in court on Wednesday as a form of public trial, in which survivors and relatives of those killed would have the opportunity to give statements.

Under the agreement, the families would also be able to ask questions of Mohammed, who must “answer their questions completely and truthfully,” the lawyers say.