Top Democrat urges defense secretary to undo 9/11 plea deal revocation

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill) is urging Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to reconsider a decision to revoke the plea deals reached with accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his accomplices.

In a letter to Austin, Durbin said the “best path to achieving justice would have been a fair trial” in the 9/11 case. Families of the deadly terrorist attacks, he wrote, “have been waiting for more than two decades for justice, and the trial has not even started.”

Durbin’s letter comes as a judge at the Office of the Military Commissions that is overseeing the case against Mohammed, also known as KSM, and his accomplices, is reviewing the authority of Austin to revoke the plea deals earlier this month.

“After years of endless pretrial proceedings, it has become painfully clear that these cases are on a road to nowhere,” Durbin wrote. “One brave woman who lost her brother on 9/11 testified at a hearing I chaired in the Senate Judiciary Committee about the pain of watching many other 9/11 family members pass away without justice or closure as the military commissions continued to flounder for years on end.

“Children who lost a parent in the attacks have grown into adults, all without the finality of a guilty verdict,” he continued, adding he was “troubled by your decision to revoke the guilty pleas that, in the reasoned judgment of the prosecutors of the case, were the best path forward to finality and justice.”

Durbin urged Austin to consult military commission prosecutors involved in the case and 9/11 families.

The Convening Authority of the military commissions had approved the plea deal on July 31 for Mohammed and his two alleged accomplices, who have been held since 2006 at the Guantánamo Bay facility in Cuba and charged twice in the case.

Two others at Guantánamo Bay are accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, but they did not reach an agreement with military commission prosecutors.

The plea deal had spurred a mixed reaction, with some families of the attacks supporting it and others opposing it. Republicans hammered the Biden administration for negotiating with terrorists.

Two days after the deal was reached, Austin, who was returning from vacation at the time it was announced, revoked it, saying he had the ultimate authority over the case. The Pentagon has said Austin wants to see a trial.

The U.S. has only ever convicted one person related to plotting the 9/11 attacks, a hijacker who was caught before the planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. More broadly, the military commission has struggled to reach convictions in cases because of allegations of torture used to extract evidence, including those against Mohammed and his alleged accomplices.

A military judge overseeing the Mohammed case ruled in a special order this week that he was considering what authorities Austin had in the case to revoke the plea deals. He is asking for legal briefs by Aug. 20.