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Plea Deals Revived for 9/11 Defendents 11/07 06:07
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A military judge has ruled that plea agreements struck by
alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants are
valid, voiding an order by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to throw out the
deals, a government official said Wednesday.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the order by the judge,
Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, has not yet been posted publicly or officially
announced.
Unless government prosecutors or others attempt to challenge the plea deals
again, McCall's ruling means that the three 9/11 defendants before long could
enter guilty pleas in the U.S. military courtroom at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
taking a dramatic step toward wrapping up the long-running and legally troubled
government prosecution in one of the deadliest attacks on the United States.
The plea agreements would spare Mohammed and two co-defendants, Walid bin
Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, the risk of the death penalty in exchange for
the guilty pleas.
Government prosecutors had negotiated the deals with defense attorneys under
government auspices, and the top official for the military commission at the
Guantanamo Bay naval base had approved the agreements.
The plea deals in the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks that killed nearly
3,000 people spurred immediate political blowback by Republican lawmakers and
others after they were made public this summer.
Within days, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a brief order saying he
was nullifying them. Plea bargains in possible death penalty cases tied to one
of the gravest crimes ever carried out on U.S. soil were a momentous step that
should only be decided by the defense secretary, Austin said at the time.
The agreements, and Austin's attempt to reverse them, have made for one of
the most fraught episodes in a U.S. prosecution marked by delays and legal
difficulties. That includes years of ongoing pretrial hearings to determine the
admissibility of statements by the defendants given their years of torture in
CIA custody.
The Pentagon is reviewing the judge's decision and had no immediate further
comment, said Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary.
The New York Times first reported the ruling.
Military officials have yet to post the judge's decision on the Guantanamo
military commission's online site. However, a legal blog that long has covered
the prosecutions from the Guantanamo courtroom said McCall's 29-page ruling
concludes that Austin lacked the legal authority to toss out the plea deals.
The ruling also calls the timing of Austin's move "fatal," coming after
Guantanamo's top official already had approved the deals, according to the
blog, called Lawdragon.
Abiding by Austin's order would give defense secretaries "absolute veto
power" over any act they disagree with, which would be contrary to the
independence of the presiding official over the Guantanamo trials, the law blog
quotes McCall as saying in the ruling.
While families of some of the victims and others are adamant that the 9/11
prosecutions continue until trial and possible death sentences, legal experts
say it's not clear that could ever happen. If the 9/11 cases ever clear the
hurdles of trial, verdicts and sentencings, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit would likely hear many of the issues in the course
of any death penalty appeals.
The issues include the CIA destruction of videos of interrogations, whether
Austin's plea deal reversal constituted unlawful interference and whether the
torture of the men tainted subsequent interrogations by "clean teams" of FBI
agents that did not involve violence.
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