Plea deal for suspected Sept. 11 mastermind thrown out by appeals court

A plea deal for accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was tossed out by a federal appeals court on Friday.

The Associated Press reported Mohammed is accused of developing and directing the plot to crash hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another of the hijacked airliners flew into a field in Pennsylvania.

What were the terms of the plea deal?

Dig deeper:

Under the agreement, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed could have pleaded guilty in a deal sparing him the risk of being executed for the 2001 attacks. According to the Associated Press, the deal, negotiated over two years, defined life sentences without parole for Mohammed and two co-defendants.

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Mohammed and the co-defendants also would have been compelled to answer lingering questions that families of the Sept. 11 victims have about the terrorist attacks.

In 2024, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rejected the deal, stating that a decision on the death penalty for an attack as severe as Sept. 11 should only be made by the defense secretary.

The Associated Press reported that lawyers for the defendants contended that the agreement was already legally in effect and that Austin, who served under President Joe Biden, acted too late in his attempt to throw it out. A military judge at Guantanamo Bay and a military appeals panel agreed with the defense lawyers.

However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit determined that Austin acted within his authority and denounced the military judge’s ruling.

Who is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

The backstory:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a top al-Qaida official and deputy to Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mohammed was captured in 2003 and taken away by intelligence agents from a hideout in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

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In a written statement obtained by the Associated Press, Mohammed, at a previous tribunal hearing, admitted that he pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden, that he was on al-Qaida’s council and that he served as operational director for bin Laden for the organizing, planning, follow-up and execution of the Sept. 11 plot "from A to Z."

Mohammed in that same statement also took credit for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center; an attempt to take down U.S. jetliners using bombs hidden in shoes; the bombing of a nightclub in Indonesia; and plans for another round of attacks after the 2001 attacks targeting landmarks like the Sears Tower in Chicago and New York City’s Empire State Building.

Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, in an operation conducted by U.S. Navy SEALs after a nearly decade-long hunt.