By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-10-19 16:16:27 | Updated at 2026-10-19 17:15:15
1 hour ago
An image of a courtroom shows Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (C) and co-defendant Walid Bin Attash (L) attending a pre-trial session in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Dec. 8, 2008. Sketch by Janet Hamlin-Pool/Getty Images
The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 19 rejected a bid from the accused Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other alleged plotters to hold the government to a plea deal that it had withdrawn.
The court wrote in its orders list released on Monday morning that the petition was denied without further explanation other than stating that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh did not participate in the decision.
Mohammed has long been accused of spearheading and organizing the plot to crash hijacked passenger jetliners into New York City’s World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon building in Virginia, and a plane that crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
A plea agreement was approved by military prosecutors in 2024 and signed off by a judge before then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin intervened in 2024, arguing that the decision should be handled by the Pentagon chief.
“I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority under the Military Commissions Act of 2009,” Austin wrote in a memorandum, directed to Susan Escallier, a former convening authority for military commissions, which was issued in August 2024.
“Effective immediately, I hereby withdraw your authority in the above-referenced case to enter into a pre-trial agreement and reserve such authority to myself,” he also wrote to Escallier.
The other men who made an appeal to the Supreme Court, alongside Mohammed, were Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi and Walid bin Attash. All three are being held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military base.
In Monday’s decision, the justices turned away appeals by the three who had also signed plea agreements in a lower court’s ruling that upheld Austin’s decision to void their deals.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had rejected an argument that Austin, who served under former President Joe Biden, had acted too late.
The Supreme Court’s action marks the latest milestone in a military prosecution of the detainees that has been beset by two decades of legal gridlock. In August, a U.S. Air Force judge set the trial for Mohammed and his co-defendants for June 2028.
Mohammed remains the most well-known figure at the Guantanamo detention facility, which was established in 2002 by then-President George W. Bush to house foreign terrorism suspects in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Defense attorneys for Mohammed, including lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, urged the Supreme Court to hear the case. They said Austin’s action in 2024 violated controlling military law and “prolonged the best chance for finality in the September 11 case in a quarter century.”
“Our country is now approaching the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001. Pretrial proceedings in this case began in 2008 and the panel’s decision leaves no end in sight,” the lawyers wrote in their 336-page petition to the high court.
“The proceedings before the D.C. Circuit added another year of delay and created a tangle of residual legal issues that promise to further delay the possibility of a trial until well into the next decade.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
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