US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked a pre-trial agreement reached with men accused of plotting the 11 September terrorist attacks.
In a memo on Friday, Mr Austin also said he was revoking the authority of the officer overseeing the court who signed the agreement on Wednesday.
The original deal, which would reportedly have spared the alleged attackers the death penalty, was criticised by some families of victims.
The memo named five defendants including the alleged ringleader of the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The original deal named three men.
“I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused… responsibly for such a decision should rest with me as the superior authority,” Mr Austin wrote to Brig Gen Susan Escallier.
“I hereby withdraw your authority. Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements.”
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Jesus fucking Christ. What useless grandstanding on the Feds’ part.
The original deal, which would reportedly have spared the alleged attackers the death penalty, was criticised by some families of victims.
Of course. It’s an election year. Can’t be ‘soft on terror’.
Anyone know what method of death penalty they would receive? Lethal injection? Hanging?
Is it?
Couldn’t we just shove them out of a plane flying over Idaho or something?
So close to shutting Gitmo down…
My understanding was these guys would still most likely be there for the rest of their lives with or without this deal.
As I heard it, once the pleas go in the goal was to get them into the federal prison system for life sentences.
I heard a report on the radio that a federal law was passed a while ago making it illegal to transfer prisoners from Gitmo to prisons within the US. These plea deals would have likeky meant the prisoners would live the rest of their lives in Gitmo, which they basically are anyway.
Who was the officer that originally made the plea deal, and without any white house involvement or even heads up it seems on what would obviously be an attention attracting action? With the general proximity to the election and after all this time they’ve been kicked top, timing feels deliberate to try to cause a difficult public moment for the administration?
Who is this person that approved the pleas originally and what’s their background?
Sorry, was late, I missed that. Thanks
Okay, so a lot of layers here, but a few things stand out…
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She was a retired Army lawyer that studied at Berkeley. Austin appointed her to replace trump appointee a year ago
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The trump appointee had been instructed to seek pleas previously.
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Feels like news outlets intentionally focused on “plea deal” phrase alone, which many will likely immediately process as “release” instead of saying a firm guilty verdict that secures life in prison over the death penalty (especially reactive, vocal, co-opted 9/11 victims rights groups with trump flags on their trucks)
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So timing feels either A) a dumb mistake when you could have pushed to after election with motions I imagine B) fear that dems wouldn’t win the election and a new trump admin would execute or C) a very progressive prosecutor that is too idealistic, defiantly trying to make this a front and center election issue (even if it could have turned into a perceived trump strength for swing voters).
Thanks for providing this update. You added some sources and data that I didn’t know, and your last point clearly articulates the set of likely causes of this misstep.
When I first became aware of this story my gut-reaction was “I fucking hate unforced errors like this!”; I’m now very curious why this happened the way it did. Mind you, in the grand scheme of things I suspect this is nothing more than a fleeting political blip.
