A federal appeals court has declined to consider whether to reinstate a plea deal in the Sept. 11, 2001, case at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, leaving the Supreme Court as the last place to potentially consider the question.
The decision on Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit most likely means pretrial hearings in the case will resume before the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people. They have been largely stalled for more than a year.
A senior Pentagon official reached the deal in the summer of 2024 with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the plot, and two co-defendants to settle the case. Under the agreement, each would admit to his role in the plot in exchange for life sentences and avert a death-penalty trial.
Within days of reaching the deal, the defense secretary at the time, Lloyd J. Austin III, declared it void, prompting a succession of reviews by higher courts.
Two military courts ruled that Mr. Austin had acted too late and that the contract was still valid. Then, in July, a three-judge panel of the appeals court sided with Mr. Austin, 2 to 1, and again nullified the deal.
On Tuesday, the full appeals court rejected a request by Mr. Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi to rehear the question, 7 to 1.
Their lawyers will now need to travel to Guantánamo Bay to meet the men for discussions on whether to ask the Supreme Court to review the plea agreement.
The next pretrial hearings in the case are scheduled for March 23 to 27 at Guantánamo. The new judge, Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, has yet to issue an agenda. He presided in a brief, mostly administrative hearing there last month.
Prosecutors and some relatives of victims of the attacks had supported the plea agreement to resolve the case rather than wait for a long military commission trial that would be subject to years of higher court review. Other family members were upset by the agreement and supported Mr. Austin’s position that the case should go to a full trial, no matter how long it took.
There is no trial date set for the case, as Colonel Schrama has to hear testimony and arguments on a base-line question of whether key evidence against Mr. Mohammed and the others is tainted by his torture and years in C.I.A. custody.
Carol Rosenberg reports on the wartime prison and court at Guantánamo Bay. She has been covering the topic since the first detainees were brought to the U.S. base in 2002.
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