As it’s a Friday and still 2024, a news dump of monumental proportions was inevitable. Here is what we know about this breaking story on the recently announced plea deal for the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack mastermind and his accomplices:
Read related:
Biden’s Pentagon Approves Plea Deal for 9/11 Conspirators but Won’t Tell the Terms of the Agreement
via NYT:
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Friday relieved the overseer of the war court at Guantánamo Bay and revoked a plea agreement reached earlier this week with the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two alleged accomplices.
The Pentagon announced the decision with the release of a memorandum relieving the senior official at the Defense Department responsible for military commissions of her oversight of the capital case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his alleged accomplices for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.
The overseer, retired Brig. Gen. Susan K. Escallier, signed a pretrial agreement on Wednesday with Mr. Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi that exchanged guilty pleas for sentences of at most life in prison. In taking away the authority, Mr. Austin assumed direct oversight of the case and canceled the agreement, effectively reinstating it as a death-penalty case.
Sec. Austin announced the move in an order released Friday, which is addressed to Escallier, and read in part:
“I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority….
Effective immediately, I hereby withdraw your authority in the above-referenced case….and reserve such authority to myself.”
The Pentagon’s release continued:
“Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pretrial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024.”
You can read the full order memo here.
This is breaking news. RedState will provide more information as it becomes available and as warranted.
