On Tuesday, attorneys with the United States Department of Justice urged a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., to allow the Pentagon to withdraw from a plea deal ruling out the death penalty for the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s. The hearing represents the latest twist in the years-long saga to obtain justice for the 9/11 attacks and a reminder of the problems that have plagued the military commission system set up to try suspects at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since its inception, the Washington Post reports. The lawyers argued if there was ever a time for courts to intervene, it was this one. “I know that the standard is high. I know that this court has a lot of discretion about the appropriate circumstances. This is the case in which to do it,” Justice Department attorney Melissa Patterson argued.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia did not indicate how it might rule on the request from Lloyd Austin, who served as defense secretary under former president Joe Biden, to cancel a military court plea deal with Mohammed and two other 9/11 defendants just two days after it was signed on July 31. The judges expressed deep skepticism over why Austin, who stepped down last week as President Donald Trump took office, waited until then to “pull the rug out” from years-long talks over a death-penalty demand — which Austin as the convening authority of the military war courts could have required up front — instead of tying up “all these courts in knots,” as U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia A. Millett put it. “Secretary Austin here could have conditioned the convening authority’s ability to enter into a plea that took the death penalty off the table from the beginning,” U.S. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao said. “Explain why the writ is appropriate in these circumstances.”
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