United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has defended his decision to revoke controversial plea deals agreed between prosecutors and three men accused of plotting the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Speaking publicly for the first time about his decision on Tuesday, Austin said it “wasn’t a decision that I took lightly” and he did so to honour the scale of the loss that occurred that day.
“I have long believed that the families of the victims, our service members, and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commissions, commission trials carried out,” he said at an event with visiting Australian officials in Annapolis, Maryland.
The Pentagon announced on July 31 that plea agreements had been reached with three of five alleged plotters held at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, where they stand accused of orchestrating the deadliest attack on US soil in the country’s history.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day as hijacked passenger planes struck targets in New York City and Washington, DC. A fourth crashed into a field as passengers tackled the hijackers.
The deals involved alleged mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad as well as accomplices Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. A fourth defendant did not agree to the terms, while a fifth man was ruled mentally unfit to continue facing trial last year.
In a statement, it described the deals as “pretrial agreements”, without offering further details. US media reports said the men would plead guilty in exchange for receiving a life sentence rather than the death penalty.
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