US Defense Secretary Wants Trial for 9/11 'Mastermind'

Photo: Saul Loeb Agence France-Presse US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin during a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on July 25.

Agence France-Presse in Annapolis

Published yesterday at 9:47 p.m.

• United States

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday that victims' families and American citizens deserve to see the “mastermind” of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and other defendants face trial, after canceling a plea deal.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed “mastermind” of the attacks that shocked the United States, had accepted a plea deal that was supposed to spare him the death penalty, but the Pentagon quickly revoked it Friday after an outcry from victims' families and politicians.

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“The families of the victims, our service members and the American people deserve to see the military commission trials in this case,” Lloyd Austin said at a news conference in Annapolis, near Washington.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a 60-year-old Pakistani, is, after Osama bin Laden, the most revoked figure linked to the September 11 attacks. The agreement announced on July 31 by the Defense Department itself shocked many relatives of the nearly 3,000 victims and drew fierce criticism from Republicans.

The terms of the since-revoked agreement have not been made public. According to the New York Times, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two accomplices had agreed to plead guilty to criminal conspiracy in exchange for a life sentence, instead of a trial that could have led to their execution.

The 9/11 cases languished for years, with the defendants held at the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, a prison that has tarnished the United States’ international image.

At the heart of the embarrassment surrounding these cases is the torture suffered by the defendants. It raises the question of whether or not a possible trial against them would be fair. A thorny issue, and an embarrassing scandal for the United States, that plea agreements would have avoided.