A military judge made a ruling on Wednesday, stating that the plea agreements which spared Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and two other terrorists from facing the death penalty must remain in place.
This unexpected decision follows a move three months ago when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin annulled the controversial plea deals previously arranged by the Office of Military Commissions in July, which had been granted to Mohammed and his alleged accomplices.
The ruling, delivered by Air Force Col. and Judge Matthew McCall at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba, was first reported by the Associated Press and has yet to be made available to the public.
The families of those killed in the devastating 9/11 attacks, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives, reacted with fury to the judge’s decision.
Retired police officer Jimmy Smith, whose wife Moira perished in the attack, expressed his anger to The Post, saying, “I am livid that this judge overturned the decision and is allowing these defendants to take a plea deal.”
Smith continued, “They committed the highest crime in this country and they should receive the worst punishment which in this case is the death penalty,” adding, “Also I don’t believe in coincidences, they waited to release this decision until after the election. They overturned it before to help the Democrats in the election.”
Dan D’Allara, whose twin brother, NYPD officer John D’Allara, was killed on 9/11, spoke with The Post and urged President-elect Donald Trump to exercise his executive powers to ensure that Mohammed and his co-conspirators are executed.
“The first Executive Order President Trump should sign is an Executive Order of Execution for the 5 admitted 9/11 plotters,” D’Allara said. “They are cowards and they killed a lot of innocent people that day and are continuing to kill people going forward.”
Patrick Hendry, President of the New York City Police Benevolent Association, called Wednesday’s ruling “shameful” and demanded that the situation be corrected immediately.
“This is yet another shameful twist in a case that has seen far too many,” Hendry said. “The cycle of revictimizing our hero 9/11 families needs to end. Our government needs to find a way to fix this immediately.”
“Justice cannot wait any longer,” he added.
The pre-trial agreements involving Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the al-Qaeda attacks, and two other accused conspirators—Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi—had originally offered the men immunity from the death penalty in exchange for guilty pleas, as part of the government’s lengthy process to prosecute the alleged terrorists.
These three individuals have been incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay since 2003.
The plea agreements, proposed by the Office of Military Commissions in July, sparked significant backlash from the families of the 9/11 victims and survivors, many of whom condemned the arrangements as a grave injustice and expressed a preference for a full trial for the accused men.
Following this, Austin, 70, made the decision to relieve the official who had approved the plea deals of his duties, choosing to intervene personally in the case.
“There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of 9/11 and the Americans that were murdered that day; also those who died trying to save lives and the troops and their families who gave so much for this country in the years following that,” Austin said, explaining his decision. “I’m deeply mindful of my duty to all those whose lives were lost or changed forever on 9/11, and I fully understand that no measure of justice can ever make up for their loss.”
Austin added, “So this wasn’t a decision that I took lightly, but I have long believed that the families of the victims, our servicemembers, and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commissions — commission trials carried out in this case.”
The lawyers representing the accused terrorists criticized the Secretary of Defense’s actions, describing them as “corrupt” and insisting that the plea deals had been negotiated in “good faith” over several years.
“We have had an unprecedented act by a government official to pull back what was a valid agreement,” Walter Ruiz, the attorney for al Hawsawi, said during a hearing at Guantanamo Bay, as reported by CNN.
“For us, it raises very serious questions about continuing to engage in a system that seems so obviously corrupt and rigged,” he added.
Kathy Vigiano, a retired police officer and widow of Detective Joseph Vigiano, who was also killed on 9/11, expressed her disbelief to The Post, saying that while she cannot accept that the accused terrorists will not be executed, she now hopes they will receive life sentences without parole.
“It’s unbelievable to me that these terrorists won’t get death,” Vigiano said. “I can only hope that they get life without the possibility of parole.”
{Matzav.com}