Appeals court throws out plea deal for alleged mastermind of Sept. 11
attacks
[July 12, 2025]
WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided federal appeals court on Friday threw out an
agreement that would have allowed accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed to plead guilty in a deal sparing him the risk of
execution for al-Qaida’s 2001 attacks.
The decision by a panel of the federal appeals court in Washington,
D.C., undoes an attempt to wrap up more than two decades of military
prosecution beset by legal and logistical troubles. It signals there
will be no quick end to the long struggle by the U.S. military and
successive administrations to bring to justice the man charged with
planning one of the deadliest attacks ever on the United States.
The deal, negotiated over two years and approved by military prosecutors
and the Pentagon’s senior official for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a year ago,
stipulated life sentences without parole for Mohammed and two
co-defendants.
Mohammed is accused of developing and directing the plot to crash
hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another
of the hijacked planes flew into a field in Pennsylvania.
Relatives of the Sept. 11 victims were split on the plea deal. Some
objected to it, saying a trial was the best path to justice and to
gaining more information about the attacks, while others saw it as the
best hope for bringing the painful case to a conclusion and getting some
answers from the defendants.
The plea deal would have obligated the men to answer any lingering
questions that families of the victims have about the attacks.
But then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin repudiated the deal, saying a
decision on the death penalty in an attack as grave as Sept. 11 should
only be made by the defense secretary.
Attorneys for the defendants had argued that the agreement was already
legally in effect and that Austin, who served under President Joe Biden,
acted too late to try to throw it out. A military judge at Guantanamo
and a military appeals panel agreed with the defense lawyers.
But, by a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit found Austin acted within his authority and faulted the
military judge’s ruling.
The panel had previously put the agreement on hold while it considered
the appeal, first filed by the Biden administration and then continued
under President Donald Trump.
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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind, is seen
shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan, March 1, 2003,
in this photo obtained by the Associated Press. (AP Photo, File)
“Having properly assumed the convening authority, the Secretary
determined that the ‘families and the American public deserve the
opportunity to see military commission trials carried out.’ The
Secretary acted within the bounds of his legal authority, and we
decline to second-guess his judgment,” judges Patricia Millett and
Neomi Rao wrote.
Millett was an appointee of President Barack Obama while Rao was
appointed by Trump.
In a dissent, Judge Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, wrote, “The
government has not come within a country mile of proving clearly and
indisputably that the Military Judge erred.”
Brett Eagleson, who was among the family members who objected to the
deal, called Friday’s appellate ruling “a good win, for now.”
“A plea deal allows this to be tucked away into a nice, pretty
package, wrapped into a bow and put on a shelf and forgotten about,”
said Eagleson, who was 15 when his father, shopping center executive
John Bruce Eagleson, was killed in the attacks.
Brett Eagleson was unmoved by the deal’s provisions for the
defendants to answer Sept. 11 families’ questions; he wonders how
truthful the men would be. In his view, “the only valid way to get
answers and seek the truth is through a trial” and pretrial
fact-finding.
Elizabeth Miller, who was 6 when the attacks killed her father,
firefighter Douglas Miller, was among those who supported the deal.
“Of course, growing up, a trial would have been great initially,”
she said. But “we’re in 2025, and we’re still at the pretrial
stage.”
“I just really don’t think a trial is possible,” said Miller, who
also favored the deal because of her opposition to the death penalty
in general.
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Peltz reported from New York.
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