By scheduling early January plea hearings in the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 9/11 cases, a U.S. military judge signaled a deepening battle with the Pentagon over the independence of the military commission that has presided over the long-running prosecution, the Associated Press reports. The move by Judge Matthew McCall, an Air Force colonel, comes despite Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s effort to scuttle the plea agreements by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants to enter guilty pleas in exchange for life sentences. McCall provisionally scheduled the plea hearings to take place over two weeks starting Jan. 6, with Mohammed — the defendant accused of coming up with using commercial jetliners for the attacks — expected to enter his plea first, if Austin’s efforts to block it fails.
Austin is seeking to throw out the agreements for Mohammed and fellow defendants Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, which would put the more than 20-year government prosecution efforts back on track for a trial that carries the risk of the death penalty. While prosecutors negotiated the plea agreements under Defense Department auspices over more than two years, and they received the needed approval this summer from the senior official overseeing the Guantanamo prosecutions, the deals triggered angry condemnation from Sens. Mitch McConnell and Tom Cotton and other leading Republicans when the news emerged. Within days, Austin issued an order throwing out the deals, saying the gravity of the 9/11 attacks meant any decision on waiving the possibility of execution for the defendants should be made by him. Defense attorneys argued that Austin had no legal standing to intervene and his move amounted to outside interference that could throw into question the legal validity of the proceedings at Guantanamo. McCall ruled last week that Austin lacked any legal ground to reject the plea deals and that his intervention was too late because it came after approval by the top official at Guantanamo made them valid. McCall’s ruling also confirmed that the government and Guantanamo’s top authority agreed to clauses in the plea deals for Mohammed and one other defendant that bar authorities from seeking possible death penalties again even if the plea deals were later discarded for some reason. The clauses appeared written in advance to try to address the kind of battle now taking place.
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