U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday revoked plea offers agreed to earlier this week with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the person accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 assaults, and two accomplices who’re held on the U.S. army jail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Pentagon mentioned on Wednesday the plea offers had been entered into however didn’t elaborate on particulars. A U.S. official mentioned they virtually definitely concerned responsible pleas in trade for taking the dying penalty off the desk.
Nonetheless on Friday, Austin relieved Susan Escallier, who oversees the Pentagon’s Guantanamo warfare court docket, of her authority to enter into pre-trial agreements within the case and took on the duty himself.
“Efficient instantly, within the train of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements,” Austin wrote in a memo.
Criticism from Republican lawmakers
Many Republican lawmakers, together with Home of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson and U.S. Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell, strongly criticized the plea offers.
Mohammed is probably the most well-known inmate on the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, which was arrange in 2002 by then-U.S. President George W. Bush to accommodate international militant suspects following the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults on the USA.
Mohammed is accused of masterminding the plot to fly hijacked business passenger plane into the World Commerce Heart in New York Metropolis and into the Pentagon. The 9/11 assaults, as they’re recognized, killed almost 3,000 folks and plunged the USA into what would turn out to be a two-decade-long warfare in Afghanistan.
Plea offers had additionally been reached by two different detainees: Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.
