U.S. defense secretary rejects plea deal for 9/11 mastermind, puts death penalty back on table

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III on Friday put the death penalty back on the table for the mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks and two accomplices, rejecting a plea deal offered by military prosecutors earlier this week.

“Effective immediately, I hereby withdraw your authority in the above-referenced case to enter into a pre-trial agreement and reserve such authority to myself,” Austin wrote in a memo Friday to retired Brigadier General Susan K. Escallier.

The announcement comes after Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his top lieutenants agreed to plead guilty "in exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment,” according to a Department of Defense letter sent to victims’ families Wednesday.

The Department of Defense first disclosed its Office of Military Commissions was working on a plea deal that would spare Mohammed and his accomplices their lives last August. 

The sudden turnabout late Friday was met with mixed response by those who lost loved ones in the attacks.

Elizabeth Miller, whose father Douglas Miller, a New York City firefighter, died, is among the people related to victims of 9/11 who have been pushing for a plea agreement for years.

“I feel Ike this back and forth is completely disrespectful to 9/11 families,” Miller said. “This has already gone on for 13 years. When will it end?”

Others applauded Austin’s intervention in the mass murder case.

“This is a great turn of events,” said Terry Strada, whose husband Tom died on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower on 9/11. “I am very happy to see their plea deal revoked and the death penalty back on the table and hope justice will be served swiftly.”

Strada, the National Chair of 9/11 Families United, had called the U.S. plea deal a “victory” for the 9/11 plotters.

Mohammed has been jailed at Guantanamo prison for nearly two decades and is considered to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. The now-scuttled plea deal would have given Mohammed and two of his al Qaeda lieutenants life sentences and would have removed the possibility of a death penalty trial.

The three accused men had agreed to plead guilty to all offenses, including the murder of 2,976 people, according to the Department of Defense's Office of the Chief Prosecutor for Military Commissions.

Two of Mohammed's accomplices in the planning for the 9/11 attack, Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawasawi, had also entered into plea agreements Wednesday, the DOD said. All three men had been detained at Guantanamo prison for nearly two decades with no formal prison sentences imposed. Under the now-void plea deal, they were scheduled to be sentenced by a panel of military officers in the summer of 2025.

Mohammed is described in court papers as an al-Qaeda militant and the principal architect of the 9/11 assault on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside Washington. In CIA custody, interrogators subjected Mohammed to “enhanced interrogation techniques” including waterboarding him 183 times, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's 2014 report on the agency’s detention and interrogation programs.

The plea deal rejected by Austin would have required Mohammed and the other two combatants be sentenced by a panel of military officers at a sentencing hearing expected to happen in the summer of 2025. Family members of victims would have been able to testify at the hearing and provide a statement for the jury to use in determining a sentence.

The families would also have been able to ask the al-Qaeda operatives questions about their role in the attacks and motives. Mohammed and the others would have been required to answer as part of the plea agreement, according to the original letter explaining the terms of the plea deal. The letter was sent to family members of 9/11 victims.

Some family members interviewed by USA TODAY earlier this week said that they supported the plea, largely because of their right to ask questions to the attackers at the sentencing hearing. Some, such as Miller, anticipated asking Mohammed about his connections to Osama Bin Laden, for instance.

The families were told in the letter they received on Wednesday that the government had carefully considered all options and decided that a plea arrangement was best.

“The decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement after 12 years of pre-trial litigation was not reached lightly; however, it is our collective, reasoned, and good-faith judgment that this resolution is the best path to finality and justice," military prosecutors wrote in the letter.

Contributing: Tom Vanden Brook and Josh Meyer, USA TODAY