The Pentagon chief was caught off guard by prosecutors' decision last week to offer plea deals to the men.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has defended his decision to overturn controversial plea deals reached between prosecutors and three men accused of plotting the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Speaking publicly for the first time about his decision on Tuesday, Austin said it was “not a decision I made lightly” and that he did so to honor the magnitude of the loss that occurred that day.
“I have long believed that the families of the victims, our military and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commissions, commission trials conducted,” he said at an event with visiting Australian officials in Annapolis, Maryland.
The Pentagon announced on July 31 that plea deals had been reached with three of the five alleged plotters held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, where they are accused of orchestrating the deadliest attack on U.S. soil in the country's history.
Nearly 3,000 people died that day when hijacked passenger planes attacked targets in New York City and Washington, D.C. A fourth plane crashed in a field as passengers attacked the hijackers.
The deals involved the alleged mastermind of the crime, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, as well as his accomplices Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. A fourth defendant did not agree to the terms, while a fifth man was declared mentally unfit to stand trial last year.
In a statement, the organization described the deals as “pre-trial agreements,” without offering further details. U.S. media reported that the men would plead guilty in exchange for receiving a life sentence instead of the death penalty.
The defendants are due to face trial in a military court at the maximum-security facility in Cuba, but their cases have been stalled for years amid legal disputes.
Plea deals had been welcomed by some as the only viable way to resolve the long-stalled 9/11 cases, including J. Wells Dixon, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Dixon, who has represented Guantanamo defendants and other detainees who have been cleared of wrongdoing, accused Austin of “caving to political pressure and pushing some victims’ families over an emotional cliff” with the reversal.
The plea deals sparked outrage among some victims' relatives and Republican lawmakers, who accused President Joe Biden's administration of treating the defendants too lightly.
Austin himself was also surprised by the decision, Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday.
“This is not something that the secretary [Lloyd Austin] “We did not know that the prosecution or the defense would accept the terms of the plea agreement,” he said.
On Friday, a tersely worded letter from the defense secretary said the plea agreements had been withdrawn. Austin added that Susan Escallier, the official in charge of the military commission who had signed them, had also been relieved of her authority to enter into pretrial agreements and that he would now assume responsibility for the case.
“Effective immediately, in exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pretrial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024,” the letter said.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed the Biden administration played no role in the plea deals, saying the White House learned of them “the same day” they were announced.
“We had no role in that process. The president had no role. The vice president had no role. I had no role. The White House had no role,” Sullivan told reporters Thursday, without explaining why the deals were agreed upon and announced without consultation.
