9/11 guilty pleas delayed after government opposition

The US government has succeeded in temporarily blocking the accused mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks from pleading guilty amid a dispute over the terms of a pre-trial agreement.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants reached deals last summer to plead guilty to all charges in exchange for not facing a death penalty trial.

In a filing with a federal appeals court, the government argued that it and the American people would be irreparably harmed if the pleas were accepted.

A three-judge panel said they needed more time to consider the case and put the proceedings on hold. They stressed that the delay “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits” of the case.

It comes after a military judge and appeals panel rejected a previous move by Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to revoke the agreements, which had been signed by a senior official he appointed.

Almost 3,000 people were killed in the 11 September 2001 attacks, when hijackers seized passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington. Another plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.

The three men have been in US custody for over 20 years and the pre-trial hearings in the case have lasted for more than a decade.

Arguments have focused on whether evidence has been tainted by torture the defendants faced in CIA custody after their arrests.

Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning, or “waterboarding”, 183 times while held in secret CIA prisons following his arrest in 2003. Other so-called “advanced interrogation techniques” included sleep deprivation and forced nudity.

Families of some of those killed in the 9/11 attacks had criticised the deals for being too lenient or lacking transparency, while others saw them as a way of moving the complex and long-running case forward.

Those who had travelled to the US naval base of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to watch Mohammed plead guilty were speaking to journalists when news of the delay was announced.

“The US government failed the 9/11 families again. They had the chance to do the right thing and decided not to,” said Tom Resta, whose brother, sister-in-law and their unborn child were killed in the attacks.

The government had argued that going ahead with the deals would mean it was denied the opportunity to “seek capital punishment against three men charged with a heinous act of mass murder that caused the death of thousands of people and shocked the nation and the world”.

“A short delay to allow this Court to weigh the merits of the government’s request in this momentous case will not materially harm the respondents,” it said.

In their response, Mohammed’s team said the agreement offered “the first opportunity for genuine closure” in almost a quarter of a century. It said the plea negotiations, which happened over two years, had “directly involved the White House”.

In its decision on Thursday evening, the federal appeals court said its decision was aimed at giving the judges time to receive a full briefing and hear arguments “on an expedited basis”.

The delay means the matter will now fall to the incoming Trump administration.

The full details of the deals reached with Mohammed and two of his co-defendants have not been released.

In a court hearing in Guantanamo on Wednesday, his legal team confirmed that he had agreed to plead guilty to all charges.

If the deals are upheld and the pleas accepted by the court, the next steps would be appointing a military jury, known as a panel, to hear evidence at a sentencing hearing.

In court on Wednesday, this was described by lawyers as a form of public trial, where survivors and family members of those killed would be given the opportunity to give statements.

Under the agreement, the families would also be able to pose questions to Mohammed, who would be required to “answer their questions fully and truthfully”, lawyers say.