{"id":39765,"date":"2024-08-03T04:33:21","date_gmt":"2024-08-03T04:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/plea-deal-with-accused-9-11-plotters-revoked\/"},"modified":"2024-08-03T04:33:22","modified_gmt":"2024-08-03T04:33:22","slug":"plea-deal-with-accused-9-11-plotters-revoked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/plea-deal-with-accused-9-11-plotters-revoked\/","title":{"rendered":"Plea deal with accused 9\/11 plotters revoked"},"content":{"rendered":"


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US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked a pre-trial agreement reached with men accused of plotting the 11 September terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n

In a memo on Friday, Mr Austin also said he was revoking the authority of the officer overseeing the military court who signed the agreement on Wednesday. <\/p>\n

The original deal, which would reportedly have spared the alleged attackers the death penalty, was criticised by some families of victims. <\/p>\n

The memo named five defendants including the alleged ringleader of the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, all of whom are held in Guant\u00e1namo Bay. The original deal named three men.<\/p>\n

“I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused\u2026 responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior authority,” Mr Austin wrote to Brig Gen Susan Escallier.<\/p>\n

“I hereby withdraw your authority. Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements.”<\/p>\n

The White House said on Wednesday that it had played no role in the plea deal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The five men named in the memo were: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, often referred to as KSM, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin Attash, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi; and two others not mentioned in the original plea: Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali.<\/p>\n

The men have been in custody for decades without trial. All have alleged they were tortured – KSM was subjected to simulated drowning, so-called “waterboarding”, 183 times before it was banned by the US government.<\/p>\n

All have already faced more than a decade of pre-trial hearings, complicated by the allegations and evidence of torture against them.<\/p>\n

Several family members of victims had criticised the terms of the deal struck on Wednesday as too lenient.<\/p>\n

Brett Eagleson, the president of 9\/11 Justice, which represents survivors and relatives of victims, had told the BBC earlier this week that the families were “deeply troubled by these plea deals”.<\/p>\n

Terry Strada, who lost her husband Tom, told the BBC’s Today Programme: “It was a gut-punch to hear that there was a plea deal today that was giving the detainees in Guantanamo Bay what they want.”<\/p>\n

A lawyer at Guantanamo representing Mr Mohammed told The New York Times<\/a> that he was shocked by the sudden u-turn.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the secretary of defence issued such an order, I am respectfully and profoundly disappointed that after all of these years the government still has not learned the lessons of this case,\u201d said lawyer Gary Sowards.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the mischief that results from disregarding due process and fair play.\u201d<\/p>\n

The men have been accused of a litany of charges, including attacking civilians, murder in violation of the laws of war, hijacking and terrorism.<\/p>\n

In September, the Biden administration reportedly rejected the terms of a plea deal with five men held at the US Navy base in Cuba, including Mohammed.<\/p>\n

The men had reportedly sought a guarantee from the president that they would not be kept in solitary confinement and would have access to trauma treatment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged ‘ringleader’ of the 9\/11 plot<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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KSM is alleged to have brought the idea of hijacking and flying planes into buildings to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. He was captured in Pakistan in 2003 along with Hawsawi, a Saudi who was an alleged fundraiser. <\/p>\n

Ali, a computer scientist and nephew of KSM, is accused of providing technical support to the 9\/11 operation. <\/p>\n

Bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni, allegedly co-ordinated the attacks and had planned to be a hijacker but could not secure a US visa.<\/p>\n

Bin Attash, also a Yemeni, is accused of bombing the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, which killed 17 sailors, and involvement in the 11 September attacks.<\/p>\n

Several Republicans applauded the defence secretary for revoking the deal.<\/p>\n

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said the “Biden-Harris Administration is correct to reverse course”, which he said followed Republicans “launching investigations into this terrible plea deal”.<\/p>\n

“Now deliver long awaited justice for 9\/11 families,” he said. <\/p>\n

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said the decision “exercised good command judgement”. <\/p>\n

“The previous plea deal would have sent absolutely the wrong signal to terrorists throughout the world,” he added.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Friday, Republican Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Mike Rogers demanded answers from Mr Austin on how the deal was struck.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis deal signals willingness to negotiate with terrorists who deliberately harm Americans,\u201d he wrote in a letter to the defence secretary.<\/p>\n

The 9\/11 attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania sparked the “War on Terror” and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n

They were the deadliest assault on US soil since the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where 2,400 people were killed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Getty Images US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked a pre-trial agreement reached with men accused of plotting the 11 September terrorist attacks. In a memo on Friday, Mr Austin also said he was revoking the authority of the officer overseeing the military court who signed the agreement on Wednesday. The original deal, which would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[67],"tags":[357,449,909,14550,14551],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39765"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39767,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39765\/revisions\/39767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}