Military Judge Air Force Col. Matthew McCall has ruled that plea agreements struck by alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants are valid, voiding an order by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to throw out the deals, a government official said Wednesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because McCall has not yet been posted the order publicly, the Associated Press reports. Unless government prosecutors or others attempt to challenge the plea deals again, McCall’s ruling means that, soon, the three 9/11 defendants could enter guilty pleas in the U.S. military courtroom at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, taking a dramatic step toward wrapping up the long-running and legally troubled government prosecution in one of the deadliest attacks on the United States.
The plea agreements would spare Mohammed and the two co-defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, the risk of the death penalty in exchange for the guilty pleas. Government prosecutors had negotiated the deals with defense attorneys under government auspices, and the top official for the military commission at the Guantanamo Bay naval base had approved the agreements. But after they were made public this summer, he plea deals in the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people spurred immediate political blowback by Republican lawmakers and others. Within days, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a brief order saying he was nullifying them. A legal blog that long has covered the prosecutions from the Guantanamo courtroom said McCall’s 29-page ruling concludes that Austin lacked the legal authority to toss out the plea deals.
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