His courtroom drawing Monday, Dec. 8, 2008, by artist Janet Hamlin and examined by the U.S. military, shows Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, center, and co-defendant Walid Bin Attash, left, attending a pretrial hearing at the naval base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mohammed is the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks. His trial date has been postponed again and again. He remains at Guantanamo, indefinitely.
Janet Hamlin | Swimming pool | AP
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday withdrew a controversial plea deal for three men accused of planning the 9/11 attacks.
“Today, Secretary Austin signed a memorandum reserving for himself the specific authority to enter into pretrial agreements with defendants in the 9/11 military commission cases,” the Department of Defense said in a news release. “Furthermore, as the chief convening authority, the Secretary has also withdrawn from the preliminary agreements signed in these cases.”
Austin announced the move in a memo addressed to Susan Escalier, the convening authority for the military commissions who had worked to negotiate the deal.
“Effective immediately, I am withdrawing your authority in the aforementioned case to enter into a plea agreement and reserving that authority to myself,” Austin said in the letter, which removes Escalier from the case.
The defense minister said he decided “in light of the importance” of the decision to enter into a deal, adding that “responsibility for such a decision should rest with me.”
Officials said Wednesday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi reached plea deals. The three men were expected to plead guilty to lesser charges that would have prevented them from facing the death penalty, but the terms of the withdrawn deal remain unknown.
The plea deal was negotiated between the defendants, their attorneys and Escallier. Officials previously said the defendant was scheduled to appear at a hearing at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba next week.
Mohammed is accused of masterminding the 9/11 attacks, which killed 2,977 people.
A spokesman for the White House National Security Council declined to comment, referring NBC News to the Defense Department. The Ministry of Defense declined to comment beyond the press release.
The plea deal was met with criticism from victims’ families and members of Congress.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee said Friday, before Austin announced his decision, that it would launch an investigation into the White House’s role in the plea deal.
Similarly, Rep. Mike Rogers, the Alabama Republican who serves as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a letter to Austin that he was “deeply shocked and angered by the news” of a plea deal.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who served in the Obama administration, criticized the deal in a statement Thursday.
“The people responsible for structuring this awful deal did the best they could. The political hacks and those who lost faith in our justice system did the best they could,” Holder told NBC News.
