9/11 mastermind's plea deal thrown out - putting death penalty back on table
The mastermind behind the truly devastating 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has had his plea deal thrown out, which means the death penalty could be back on the table.
A federal appeals court in Washington DC today threw out an agreement that would have allowed Mohammed to plead guilty following an effort to end a long-drawn-out legal saga around the prosecution of men held at Guantanamo Bay. The 2-1 appeals court decision upheld former Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin's decision to undo the plea deal that had been approved by military lawyers and senior Pentagon staff.
The deal carried life without parole sentences for Mohammed as well as two co-defendants, taking the death penalty off the table. Pakistani national Mohammed is accused of planning the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, as well as targeting other locations in the US in 2001.
Austin said the decision to remove the death penalty from the deal could only be approved by the Secretary of Defence. But there were legal concerns over the original plea deal and whether it was actually legally binding and if Austin waited too long to move for its dismissal.
The court ultimately found Austin had legal authority to withdraw from the agreements as the promises made in the deal had not been fulfilled and also because the government had not alternatives. As the appeals court put the decision on hold, the defendants were not sentenced today as had previously been scheduled, reports Fox News.
Judges Patricia Milliett and Neomi Rao, who voted in favour, said the government "adequately explained that Secretary Austin delayed action to avoid an unlawful influence challenge, waiting to see what type of agreement, if any, would result from the negotiations and only then deciding whether intervention was necessary."
They also cited unlawful influence allegations against several government official, including the secretary of defence, Millett and Rao found Austin had been "reasonable" to withdraw from the agreements in order to avoid litigation.
"Having properly assumed the convening authority, the Secretary determined that the families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out," the judges said. "The Secretary acted within the bounds of his legal authority, and we decline to second-guess his judgment."
The dissenting Judge Roberts L. Wilkins argued siding with the government would be an overreach. The Court's holding is stunning," he said.
"Not only does the majority believe that Respondents [prosecutors who negotiated the plea deal] did not begin performance, but it holds that the government established a clear and indisputable right to a writ of mandamus or prohibition. It is impossible for me to conclude that the government has shown it is clearly and indisputably entitled to relief."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NBC News
26 minutes ago
- NBC News
Appeals court throws out plea deal for alleged mastermind of Sept. 11 attacks
WASHINGTON — A divided federal appeals court on Friday threw out an agreement that would have allowed accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to plead guilty in a deal sparing him the risk of execution for al-Qaida's 2001 attacks. The decision by a panel of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., undoes an attempt to wrap up more than two decades of military prosecution beset by legal and logistical troubles. It signals there will be no quick end to the long struggle by the U.S. military and successive administrations to bring to justice the man charged with planning one of the deadliest attacks ever on the United States. The deal, negotiated over two years and approved by military prosecutors and the Pentagon's senior official for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a year ago, stipulated life sentences without parole for Mohammed and two co-defendants. Mohammed is accused of developing and directing the plot to crash hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another of the hijacked planes flew into a field in Pennsylvania. Relatives of the Sept. 11 victims were split on the plea deal. Some objected to it, saying a trial was the best path to justice and to gaining more information about the attacks, while others saw it as the best hope for bringing the painful case to a conclusion and getting some answers from the defendants. The plea deal would have obligated the men to answer any lingering questions that families of the victims have about the attacks. But then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin repudiated the deal, saying a decision on the death penalty in an attack as grave as Sept. 11 should only be made by the defense secretary. Attorneys for the defendants had argued that the agreement was already legally in effect and that Austin, who served under President Joe Biden, acted too late to try to throw it out. A military judge at Guantanamo and a military appeals panel agreed with the defense lawyers. But, by a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found Austin acted within his authority and faulted the military judge's ruling. The panel had previously put the agreement on hold while it considered the appeal, first filed by the Biden administration and then continued under President Donald Trump. 'Having properly assumed the convening authority, the Secretary determined that the 'families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out.' The Secretary acted within the bounds of his legal authority, and we decline to second-guess his judgment,' judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao wrote. Millett was an appointee of President Barack Obama while Rao was appointed by Trump. In a dissent, Judge Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, wrote, 'The government has not come within a country mile of proving clearly and indisputably that the Military Judge erred.' Brett Eagleson, who was among the family members who objected to the deal, called Friday's appellate ruling 'a good win, for now.' 'A plea deal allows this to be tucked away into a nice, pretty package, wrapped into a bow and put on a shelf and forgotten about,' said Eagleson, who was 15 when his father, shopping center executive John Bruce Eagleson, was killed in the attacks. Brett Eagleson was unmoved by the deal's provisions for the defendants to answer Sept. 11 families' questions; he wonders how truthful the men would be. In his view, 'the only valid way to get answers and seek the truth is through a trial' and pretrial fact-finding. Elizabeth Miller, who was 6 when the attacks killed her father, firefighter Douglas Miller, was among those who supported the deal. 'Of course, growing up, a trial would have been great initially,' she said. But 'we're in 2025, and we're still at the pretrial stage.' 'I just really don't think a trial is possible,' said Miller, who also favored the deal because of her opposition to the death penalty in general.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Reeves to stop green groups from blocking defence investment
The Chancellor will announce plans to stop environmental activists blocking investment in defence in a major speech next week. Banks and pension funds currently follow environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards drawn up by private firms, which are meant to measure their impact on wider society. But pension giants and banks have been criticised for allowing these rules to restrict how much they invest in defence companies, on the basis that the firms do not promote social good. Rachel Reeves plans to bring ESG ratings under the powers of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), to ensure there is only one set of rules in future. The Treasury is expected to lay out secondary legislation later this year to facilitate the change. The new rules will benefit defence companies by making it clear that investors must take into account their positive role in keeping Britain secure. A Treasury source told The Sunday Telegraph: 'Rachel has always been clear that supporting the defence industry is consistent with ethical investing. 'If opaque ESG ratings are getting in the way of private investment, that has to change.' Officials are said to be looking to raise the profile of the Defence Investors' Advisory Group, and believe this would be a good opportunity to do so, a City source said. The group, which will be comprised of venture capital and private equity firms, will support defence start-ups and advise on how best to generate investment. In addition, the Ministry of Defence is expected to devise a financial services strategy by March 2026. A government consultation last year concluded that requirements for transparency around ESG ratings would support 'greater investor awareness of the defence industry's role'. 'Ill-considered anti-defence rules' It comes after Sir Keir Starmer vowed to spend at least 5 per cent of the UK's GDP on national security by 2035, including core defence spending rising to at least 2.5 per cent by April 2027, and 3 per cent by 2034. In March, more than 100 MPs and peers signed an open letter to the UK's finance industry urging it to 'sweep away ill-considered anti-defence rules' that limit investments in the arms industry. The letter said: 'We must rethink ESG mechanisms that often wrongly exclude all defence investment as 'unethical'.' Signatories include high ranking military figures including Baron Robertson of Port Ellen, the former general secretary of Nato, and Baron West of Spithead, a former Admiral in the Royal Navy. Aviva, Royal London and the National Employment Savings Trust (Nest) were among pension giants to restrict defence investment on ethical grounds. Later that month, António Simões, the chief executive of major pension firm Legal & General, said that defence companies should be considered ethical investments because countries need to be able to defend themselves. He said: 'There's no reason in principle why investing in defence companies cannot be consistent with responsible investing. 'Governments should promote peaceful and inclusive societies but countries also may need to defend themselves. This is a UN-type of principle. We've always said that defence companies, including UK defence companies, can be invested in.' Around £17 billion is invested in ESG funds in Britain. These ethical funds boomed in popularity after Covid with nearly 3,000 launched between 2020 and 2023 globally, attracting $600 billion of investment. Concerns have been raised that funds with ESG labels do not return as much for investors. Investors in actively managed 'green' funds would have seen their money underperform the average UK equity market by 3.8 per cent a year between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2025, analysis by SCM Direct found in February.
.png%3Ftrim%3D304%2C0%2C362%2C0%26width%3D1200%26height%3D800%26crop%3D1200%3A800&w=3840&q=100)
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Tucker Carlson claims Jeffrey Epstein worked for Israel to blackmail US officials: ‘Every single person in DC thinks that'
Tucker Carlson has claimed that deceased child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was working for the Israeli government and that 'every single person in Washington D.C.' thinks the same. 'I've never met anyone who doesn't think that. I don't know any of them that hate Israel. But no one feels they can say that,' the former Fox News host told an audience in Florida on Friday. Carlson also suggested that the disgraced financier may have been running 'a blackmail operation' as he discussed new information recently released by the Department of Justice. A two-page memo from the DOJ and FBI said that Epstein had no 'client list,' and that the convicted pedophile died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019, shortly before going to trial – angering some among the MAGA faithful. Speaking about the development at a Turning Point USA summit in Tampa, Carlson slammed the findings of the administration.'The real question is, why was he doing this, on whose behalf, and where did the money come from?' he said. 'I think the real answer is Jeffrey Epstein was working on behalf of intel services, probably not American. And we have every right to ask, on whose behalf was he working? 'Now, no one's allowed to say that the foreign government is Israel because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that's naughty. There is nothing wrong with saying that. There is nothing hateful about saying that, Carlson said. 'There's nothing anti-Semitic about saying that. There's nothing even anti-Israel about saying that. 'And you have the right to expect your government will not act against your interests, and you have a right to demand that foreign governments not be allowed to act against your interests.' Carlson has become one of the the big names on the list of MAGA luminaries who are irate over the DOJ's conclusions and previously insisted there was an 'obvious' reason why Attorney General Pam Bondi was 'covering up' the 'client list.' In addition, footage capturing Epstein's final hours – also released by the DOJ – has fuelled further conspiracy theories, after it appeared to have a minute of footage missing. A digital clock visible on the bottom left corner of the footage jumps from 11:58:58 p.m. to 12:00:00 a.m. Officials have not yet offered an explanation for the time gap to The Independent or the New York Times.
