Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and his Al Quaeda cronies had a plea deal: admit everything and get life in jail. It didn't go down well with some families of those killed in the 9/11 attacks, and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin yesterday revoked the arrangement.
In a memo on Friday, Mr Austin also said he was revoking the authority of the officer overseeing the military court who signed the agreement on Wednesday. … "I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused… responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior authority," Mr Austin wrote to Brig Gen Susan Escallier.I hereby withdraw your authority. Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements." The White House said on Wednesday that it had played no role in the plea deal.
The implied outcome is that Mohammend and co. will now be tried and executed, but the reason the plea deal happened is because of the slim chances of getting it done. The concerns: KSM and pals might never be tried or executed because the political dimension of their atrocities calls for a complete accounting, the complexity of the case puts that beyond the capacity of courts to accomplish within any conceivable timeframe, and they were tortured, which could derail the outcome indefinitely. Savvy readers may notice that this is functionally the same outcome as the plea deal, but without anything resembling justice.
