(Reuters) – U.S. Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday revoked plea offers agreed to earlier this week with the person accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 assaults, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and two accomplices, who’re held on the U.S. army jail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Pentagon mentioned on Wednesday the plea offers had been entered into however didn’t elaborate on particulars. A U.S. official mentioned they virtually definitely concerned responsible pleas in alternate for taking the loss of life penalty off the desk.
Nonetheless on Friday, Austin relieved Susan Escallier, who oversees the Pentagon’s Guantanamo struggle court docket, of her authority to enter into pre-trial agreements within the case and took on the accountability himself.
“Efficient instantly, within the train of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements…,” Austin wrote in a memo.
Many Republican lawmakers, together with Home of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell, strongly criticized the plea offers.
Mohammed is probably the most well-known inmate on the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, which was arrange in 2002 by then-U.S. President George W. Bush to deal with international militant suspects following the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults on america.
Mohammed is accused of masterminding the plot to fly hijacked industrial passenger plane into the World Commerce Heart in New York Metropolis and into the Pentagon. The 9/11 assaults, as they’re identified, killed almost 3,000 individuals and plunged america into what would change into a two-decade-long struggle in Afghanistan.
Plea offers had additionally been reached by two different detainees: Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.
