Pentagon appeals court upholds plea deal for 9/11 orchestrator
Source: Axios
4 hours ago
A Pentagon appeals court on Monday ruled that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin overstepped when he revoked a plea deal that prosecutors reached with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Why it matters: After months of back and forth over the plea agreement, the ruling puts the proceedings back on track for a potential guilty plea hearing next week, the New York Times reported.
Catch up quick: Mohammed and two other alleged 9/11 plotters reached plea deals with the Pentagon in late July for their roles in the terrorist attack that killed almost 3,000 people.
The three men had been facing the death penalty. Under the deal, they agreed to plea guilty to war crimes in exchange for life sentences, per the Times. However, Austin revoked the agreement in early August after news of the deal was met with outrage from families of the victims and some Republicans. His decision set in motion another round of litigation. In November, a military judge ruled that the plea agreements for the three defendants were valid.
State of play: The U.S. Court of Military Commission noted Tuesday that as of the previous day, the court had denied the government's writ of mandamus and prohibition in the case of Mohammed and his co-defendants.
The appeals panel wrote in the decision that Austin had not had the authority to revoke the deals because the defendants had already "started performance" of the pretrial agreements, the Times reported.
Read more: https://www.axios.com/2024/12/31/911-plea-deal-appeal-khalid-sheikh-mohammed
= new reply since forum marked as read
this tangled mess of application of definitions, treatment of legal jurisdiction etc. First we claimed holding them and doing the things we did to them didn't violate any treaties about treatment of war prisoners because they were not "uniformed" combatants and weren't a part of an "official force of a state". Ok.
But how then do we find an ability to charge them under "war crimes" when those treaties deal with acts by officials and official forces of a state? Put another way, the US tribunal in Gitmo seems to be saying "You can't qualify for how to be treated under the treaties but we can charge you under those same treaties". Or it's like the US military court saying "We'll just find some charge we like from some document somewhere and use that."
I have zero empathy for these clowns who did 9/11 but I also have zero tolerance for this goofy process of applying the law like you're ordering take-out from a Chinese restaurant.
