Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the strategist behind the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, was supposed to plead guilty in court on Friday. This will no longer happen, as the U.S. government has blocked the plea deal. Why does Washington want to prevent the strategist of the 2001 attacks from speaking in court?
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as KSM, was expected to enter a plea at a war court at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in southeast Cuba. A federal appeals court halted the scheduled proceedings on Thursday evening, considering the U.S. government’s requests to abandon the plea deals signed by Mohammed and two co-defendants, as it would cause „irreparable” harm to both him and public opinion.
A three-judge panel reasoned that the delay "should not be interpreted in any way as a decision on the merits," but was intended to give the court time to receive full information and hear arguments in an expedited procedure.
This delay means that the issue will fall to the future Trump administration, reports BBC.
Let's see what was supposed to happen this week and how this impasse was reached.
At the hearing slated to begin Friday morning, Mohammed was to plead guilty to his involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks, when the attackers hijacked passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon building. Another plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.
Riday's hearing was to take place in a courtroom at the Guantanamo naval base, where the families of the victims and the press were to be in a viewing gallery behind thick glass.
23 years of delays
The plea deal was reached last summer after two years of negotiations. However, preliminary hearings held at a military court at the Guantanamo naval base have been ongoing for over a decade, complicated by issues related to the torture that KSM and other defendants allegedly endured while in U.S. custody, which would have affected the evidence obtained by authorities.
Following his arrest in Pakistan in 2003, Mohammed spent three years in CIA secret prisons, where he was reportedly subjected to torture 183 times through waterboarding, among other so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" that included sleep deprivation and forced nudity.
Karen Greenberg, author of "The Least Worst Place: How Guantanamo Became the World's Most Notorious Prison," said that the use of torture "has made it virtually impossible to bring these cases to trial in a manner that respects the rule of law and American jurisprudence."
"It is apparently impossible to present evidence in these cases without using evidence derived from torture. Furthermore, the fact that these individuals were tortured adds another level of complexity to the criminal prosecutions," she explained.
The case also involves the competence of military commissions, which operate under different rules than the traditional U.S. criminal justice system and slow down the process.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin named the senior official who signed the plea deal with KSM. Austin then claimed that he was on a trip at the time of the designation and was caught off guard, according to the New York Times.
Several days later, the Defense Secretary tried to revoke his decision, stating in a note: "Responsibility for such a decision should fall to me as the superior authority."
However, both a military judge and a military appeals commission ruled that the agreement was valid and that Austin acted too late.
In another attempt to block the deal, the U.S. government asked a federal appeals court this week to intervene, emphasizing that Mohammed and the other two defendants were accused of "committing the most flagrant criminal act on American soil in modern history" and that enforcing the agreements "would deprive the government and the American people of a public trial regarding the guilt of the defendants and the possibility of capital punishment, despite the fact that the defense secretary legally withdrew those agreements."
In other words, the plea deal affects the administration of justice.
After the announcement of the deal last summer, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, then the party leader in this chamber of Congress, issued a statement describing it as "a shocking abdication of the government's responsibility to defend America and provide justice."
Some families of those killed in the attacks have also criticized the deal, saying it is too lenient or lacking transparency. Others see it as a path to convictions in complex and lengthy proceedings and have expressed disappointment with the government's recent intervention.
What the plea deal includes
The full details of the deal reached with Mohammed and two of his co-defendants have not been made public. It is known that an agreement means the defendant would not face a trial seeking the death penalty.
In a court session on Wednesday, KSM's legal team confirmed that he had agreed to plead guilty to all charges. He did not address the court personally but through his team of lawyers as they reviewed the deal, making minor corrections and modifications to the wording proposed by the prosecution and the judge.
If the deal is upheld and accepted by the court, the next steps would involve appointing a military jury, known as a panel, to hear evidence in a hearing and issue a sentence.
Under the agreement, families could also pose questions to Mohammed, to which he would need to "fully and truthfully respond," say the lawyers.
23 years at Guantanamo
For nearly two decades, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has been the most well-known detainee at Guantanamo and one of the last terrorism suspects held there.
He has been charged with multiple offenses, including conspiracy and murder, resulting in 2,976 victims, and has been detained since 2006 at a military prison in Guantanamo Bay after being captured by the CIA.
The prison was opened 23 years ago on January 11, 2002, during the "war on terror" declared by the G.W. Bush administration following the September 11 attacks.
Most of the detainees here have never been charged, and the military prison has become a target of vehement criticism from human rights groups and the United Nations for the treatment of detainees. Most have been repatriated or relocated to other countries.
Currently, there are 15 detainees at Guantanamo, the lowest number in the history of this prison. Except for six of them, they have been accused or convicted of war crimes.
KSM has previously stated that he planned "from A to Z" the 9/11 operation. He conceived the idea of training pilots to steer commercial planes into buildings and presented his plans to Osama bin Laden, the former leader of the Islamist group al-Qaeda.
T.D.