Washington – The lawyers of the Department of Justice and the defense lawyers of the three men accused of planning the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 faced a Federal Court of Appeals on Tuesday in a judicial fight on whether the guilt agreements reached with the defendants Last summer it can advance.
A panel of three judges for the United States Court of Appeals for the Circuit of the Columbia district is considering whether former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin exceeded his authority when he revoked the agreements prior to the trial That military prosecutors arrived at the defendants, including the alleged intellectual author of September 11 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The agreements with Mohammed and two alleged accomplices, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin ‘Atash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, were agreed at the end of July after more than two years of negotiations. The agreements were approved by a senior Pentagon official who supervises the Military Court of the Bay of Guantanamo, Cuba, Brigade General Susan Escallier, who Austin designated as an authority for military commissions in 2023.
According to the terms that have been published publicly, men would declare themselves guilty of eight positions derived from their alleged roles in the terrorist attacks of September 11 and, in return, avoid the death penalty. The complete parameters of the offers remain under seal.
But shortly after the agreement was announced, Austin said that he was terminating them, writing in a memorandum that “in the light of the importance” of the agreements prior to the trial, “the responsibility of such decision should rest with me.”
The case came before the DC circuit after a judge of the Military Commission in the Guantanamo Bay, which has been supervising the case, governed in November This Austin annulment was illegal, which makes the agreements valid and enforceable.
A Military Appeals Court last month He refused to let Austin terminate the agreements prior to the trial because the defendants had begun to make a promise contained in them.
Then, the United States government asked the DC circuit to intervene and sought to prevent the Military Court in the Guantanamo Bay will accept the agreements, as well as the pause procedures. The Court of Appeals earlier this month agreed to put the guilt audience waiting and establish arguments in the case on an accelerated basis.
The Department of Justice is asking the DC circuit to find that Austin retired validly from preventive agreements and prohibits the Military Commission from conducting guilt hearings, during which the defendants would enter to guilty statements.
“We believe that this is the circumstance to issue the brief and cash and allow the determinations of the Secretary of Defense to govern the course of the prosecutions of the alleged intellectual author of September 11 and the two alleged co-conspirators,” Melissa Patterson, department of justice lawyer, he said to the panel of three judges.
Judges Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins and Neomi Rao heard almost four hours of arguments about Austin’s decision to relax the agreements.
Patterson revealed to the judges that as the procedures were starting up, the military judge in Guantanamo Bay said he would begin to take the supplications of the three defendants on Thursday morning if the DC circuit denied the Relief to the Government.
She asked the Court to leave her previous order to pause the procedures in her place if it is placed with the defendants of September 11 to allow the time of the Department of Justice to assess whether you must request an additional review.
In all the arguments, the judges papted Patterson with questions about why Austin waited up to two days after the guilt agreements were reached to withdraw the author’s authority to hold the agreements and assume that power for himself.
Austin could have put limits to Escallier’s ability to enter the supplications from the beginning, Rao, appointed by President Trump during his first term, he said. He later acknowledged that the circumstances of the Government’s case and interest are “extraordinary.”
The judge said the executive branch had “all opportunities” and the power to take measures to exercise control over Escallier, the call authority, before reaching the agreements.
Millett, appointed for the DC circuit by former President Barack Obama, said the Austin revocation of the agreements two days after the offers were signed “all these courts in knots” trying to discover the next steps.
The judges also weighed if Austin lost their window to terminate the agreements completely, since the rules governing the military commissions allow the call authority, defined as the Secretary of Defense or an official designed by the secretary, to withdraw from an agreement in an agreement in Any time before the defendant begins the performance of the promises contained in them.
“The strength and plausibility of his argument that the secretary was being prudent waiting,” Wilkins said, and said there are events that could take place that would eliminate their authority to withdraw the agreements.
Michel Paradis, who represents Muhammad in the case, said that “it is not appropriate” that the government asks the DC circuit to “save” an agreement prior to the trial that entered, and the defendants began to make.
The Secretary of Defense, he said, had many opportunities in a period of several years to know and prevent agreements, but decided not to exercise his authority during the call authority until two days after the offers were signed.
It is not clear how soon the DC circuit will issue its decision.