The supreme court on Monday rejected an effort to revive a plea deal for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the attacks on 11 September 2001. The agreement would have spared Mohammed the risk of execution in exchange for his guilty plea and a sentence of life in prison without parole. Mohammed is accused of developing and directing the plot to crash hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon 25 years ago.
Another of the hijacked planes crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. The plea agreement was approved by military prosecutors and the Pentagon’s senior official for Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, before Lloyd Austin, then the defense secretary, stepped in. Austin threw out the deal in 2024, saying a decision on the death penalty in an attack as grave as September 11 should only be made by the defense secretary.
Relatives of the September 11 victims were split on the agreements for Mohammed and two co-defendants. Some said a trial was the best path to justice, while others saw it as the best hope for bringing the long, painful case to a conclusion. Defense attorneys had argued that Austin, who served under Joe Biden, acted too late.
But a divided appeals court panel found Austin acted within his authority.
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