The Supreme Court on Monday shut down a plea deal that would have spared Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from execution — leaving Americans to ask why their own government ever offered one to the architect of the worst attack on U.S. soil.
Mohammed, accused of developing and directing the plot that crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, has been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2006. He and two co-defendants — Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi and Walid bin Attash — struck a deal with military prosecutors in 2024 that would have traded guilty pleas for life sentences without parole. The Pentagon's senior official for Guantanamo signed off. A military commission judge approved it.
Then the public found out. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, serving under Joe Biden, stepped in and revoked the deal days later, claiming the authority to override it rested with him alone. NBC News reported that military courts initially said Austin had no such authority, but the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government in August, prompting the defendants' appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Guardian noted that defense attorneys argued Austin acted too late. The justices weren't buying it. The Court's rejection clears the path for Mohammed to stand trial before a military commission in 2028, where the death penalty is back on the table.
Here is the question neither outlet pressed: who pushed this deal in the first place? Military prosecutors and the Pentagon's Guantanamo chief don't cut plea agreements in a vacuum. The Biden Defense Department was prepared to let the mastermind of 9/11 avoid execution — and only reversed course after the political blowback made it untenable. Austin didn't reject the deal on principle. He rejected it because the public was watching.
NBC News reported that the long delay in bringing Mohammed to trial was partly caused by concerns about evidence obtained through CIA torture. That complication is real and has haunted this case for two decades. But the solution was never a quiet plea bargain that lets a mass murderer off the hook. The solution is a trial — transparent, constitutional, and final.
Families of the victims have been split. The Guardian reported some wanted a trial as the best path to justice; others saw the plea deal as the only realistic way to end a case that has dragged on for a quarter century. Both camps deserve honesty from their government. What they got was a backroom arrangement, a belated walkback, and another delay.
A fourth alleged plotter, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, was not part of the appeal and also awaits trial.
Twenty-five years after 3,000 Americans were murdered, the man who planned it still hasn't faced a verdict. The Supreme Court kept that possibility alive. Whether the Pentagon actually delivers one is another matter entirely.
