A federal appeals court on Friday threw out a plea agreement that would have spared 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from the death penalty.
The 2-1 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit determined the agreement was improperly approved.
The Hill reported the deal would have given Mohammed and other co-defendants life without parole.
The decision marks another legal twist in a military prosecution that has dragged on for over two decades.
Mohammed, the confessed architect of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil, was captured in Pakistan in 2003.
He has been held at the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and charged alongside four others for their roles in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The plea deal was part of a two-year negotiation process under the Biden administration.
In July 2024, the Pentagon confirmed it had reached pretrial agreements with Mohammed and three co-conspirators.
“The Convening Authority for Military Commissions, Susan Escallier, has entered into pretrial agreements,” the Defense Department announced in a statement.
Should Khalid Sheikh Mohammed receive the death penalty?
But just two days later, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rejected the arrangement.
Austin asserted that only he held the authority to approve such agreements.
In December, a military appeals court pushed back, siding with the original judge’s decision to allow the plea.
Friday’s federal ruling reversed that, finding the military judge’s actions to be legally flawed.
“In light of the clear and indisputable errors committed by the military judge, which implicate issues of immense national importance, we conclude that issuance of the writs is appropriate under these circumstances,” Judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao wrote.
Judge Robert Wilkins dissented.
“I am befuddled,” Wilkins wrote. “Our deference should be at its zenith when military courts follow persuasive military precedent in the construction of military rules.”
The charges against Mohammed and his co-defendants were first filed in 2008, dropped in 2010, and refiled in 2011 after a failed attempt to try them in a civilian court.
Their prosecution continues at Guantanamo Bay, more than 20 years after the attack that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
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