A federal appeals court on Friday overturned a plea deal to resolve the
Sept. 11, 2001, case
with life sentences, a decision that could restart lengthy proceedings toward a death penalty trial at Guantánamo Bay.
The 2-to-1
decision
was the latest
upheaval for families
awaiting a resolution in the long, agonizing case and does not mean the conspiracy trial can start soon. More appeals could come. Also, the previous military judge
retired recently
, and his replacement will need to read the voluminous record and decide threshold issues, including whether confessions prosecutors want to use were unlawfully obtained through torture.
A
senior Pentagon official
reached the deal in the summer of 2024 with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man accused of being the mastermind of the plot, and two other defendants. Under the agreement, each would admit to his role in the plot to avert a capital trial.
Within days of the deal, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III
declared it void
. But the judge in the case found that he was bound to the contract reached by the senior Pentagon official in charge of the war court, a retired Army lawyer whom Mr. Austin had appointed.
On Friday, two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia — Patricia A. Millett and Neomi J. Rao — found that Mr. Austin “indisputably had legal authority to withdraw from the agreements.”
The judges wrote that while prosecutors and defense lawyers presented the deal to the court in the summer of 2024, “no performance of promises had begun.”
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