Washington-A Federal Court of Appeals divided launched on Friday an agreement that would have allowed the accused of the intellectual author of September 11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to declare himself guilty in an agreement that saved him the risk of execution for the 2001 attacks of 2001 of Al-Qaida.
The decision of a panel of the Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, undone an attempt to conclude more than two decades of military prosecution harassed by legal and logistics problems. It means that there will be no rapid end for the long struggle on the part of the military and successive administrations of the United States to bring to justice the man accused of planning one of the most mortal attacks in the United States.
The agreement, negotiated for two years and approved by military prosecutors and the senior Pentagon official for the Bay of Guantanamo, Cuba, a year ago, stipulated life imprisonment without probation without probation for Mohammed and two co-prison.
Mohammed is accused of developing and directing the plot to Crash kidnapped the airplanes in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another of the kidnapped planes flew to a field in Pennsylvania.
The relatives of the victims of September 11 were divided into the guilt agreement. Some opposed him, saying that a trial was the best path to justice and obtain more information about attacks, while others saw it as the best hope to bring painful pain to a conclusion and obtain some responses from the accused.
The guilt agreement would have forced men to answer any persistent questions that the families of the victims have about the attacks.
But the then Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin repudiated the agreement, saying that a decision on the death penalty in an attack as serious as September 11 should only be taken by the Secretary of Defense.
The defendants’ lawyers had argued that the agreement was already legally in force and that Austin, which served under President Joe Biden, acted too late to try to throw it. A military judge in Guantanamo and a panel of military appeals agreed with the defense lawyers.
But, by a 2-1 vote, the United States Court of Appeals for the Columbia district circuit found that Austin acted within his authority and criticized the ruling of the military judge.
The panel had previously arrested the agreement on hold while considering the appeal, presented for the first time by the Biden Administration and then continued under President Donald Trump.
“Having properly assumed the call authority, the secretary determined that” families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see the trials of the Military Commission. The secretary acted within the limits of his legal authority, and we refuse to guess his trial, ”wrote Judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao.
Millett was appointed by President Barack Obama, while Rao was appointed by Trump.
In a dissent, Judge Robert Wilkins, a designated one from Obama, wrote: “The Government has not reached a mile of country to prove clearly and unquestionably that the military judge made a mistake.”
Brett Eagleson, who was among the family members who opposed the agreement, called on Friday’s appeal ruling “a good victory for now.”
“A plea agreement allows this to be hidden in a pleasant and beautiful package, wrapped in an arc and put a shelf and forget,” said Eagleson, who was 15 years old when his father, executive of the John Bruce Eagleson Shopping Center, was killed in the attacks.
Brett Eagleson is not moved by the provisions of the agreement for the defendants to answer the questions of the September 11 families; He wonders how sincere men would be. In his opinion, “the only valid way of obtaining answers and seeking the truth is through a trial” and the search for facts prior to the trial.
Elizabeth Miller, who was 6 when the attacks killed her father, firefighter Douglas Miller, was among those who supported the agreement.
“Of course, when growing, a trial would have been initially excellent,” he said. But “we are in 2025, and we are still in the previous stage.”
“I really don’t think a trial is possible,” said Miller, who also favored the agreement due to his opposition to the death penalty in general.
