By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. military appeals court has ruled that plea deals involving the man accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two accomplices can proceed after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, would have taken earlier steps to invalidate the agreements.
In August, Austin terminated plea agreements the Pentagon had entered into with the trio, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
In November, a U.S. military judge ruled that Austin acted too late in revoking the plea agreements and that they were still valid. Monday night’s order by the U.S. military appeals court upheld that ruling.
The Pentagon declined to comment. He previously said Austin was surprised by the plea deals and that the secretary was not consulted because that process is independent.
Under the agreements, the three men may plead guilty to the attacks and, in exchange, not face the death penalty.
Mohammed is the best-known inmate at the US detention center known as Guantanamo Bay on the coast of Cuba. It was created in 2002 by then-US President George W. Bush to detain suspected foreign militants following the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
Mohammed is accused of masterminding the plot to crash a hijacked commercial passenger plane into the World Trade Center in New York City and into the Pentagon. The 9/11 attacks, as they are known, killed nearly 3,000 people and plunged the United States into a two-decade war in Afghanistan.
Human rights experts, including at the United Nations, condemned torture at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere during the so-called war on terrorism and demanded an apology from Washington. Former President Barack Obama acknowledged in 2014 that the United States had practiced torture and said it was “contrary to our values.”
Separately, the Pentagon said Monday that Ridah Bin Saleh Al-Yazidi, one of the longest-held detainees at Guantanamo Bay, was repatriated from the detention center to his home country of Tunisia. He was held without charge for more than 20 years.
The Pentagon said 26 detainees remained at the facility, of whom 14 are eligible for transfer.