U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday revoked plea offers agreed to earlier this week with the person accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 assaults, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and two accomplices, who’re held on the U.S. navy jail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Pentagon mentioned on Wednesday the plea offers had been entered into however didn’t elaborate on particulars. A U.S. official mentioned they virtually definitely concerned responsible pleas in alternate for taking the dying penalty off the desk.
However on Friday, Austin relieved Susan Escallier, who oversees the Pentagon’s Guantanamo battle courtroom, of her authority to enter into pre-trial agreements within the case and took on the duty himself.
“Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements…,” Austin wrote in a memo.
Many Republican lawmakers, together with House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, strongly criticized the plea offers.
Mohammed is probably the most well-known inmate on the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, which was arrange in 2002 by then-U.S. President George W. Bush to accommodate overseas militant suspects following the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults on the United States.
Mohammed is accused of masterminding the plot to fly hijacked business passenger plane into the World Trade Center in New York City and into the Pentagon. The 9/11 assaults, as they’re recognized, killed almost 3,000 folks and plunged the United States into what would turn into a two-decade-long battle in Afghanistan.
Plea offers had additionally been reached by two different detainees: Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.
Source: www.anews.com.tr