Biden administration succeeds in temporarily blocking a plea deal for accused 9/11 mastermind

Biden administration halts 9/11 mastermind's guilty plea, sparking legal battle over plea agreement and death penalty.

The Biden administration succeeded Thursday (January 9, 2025) in temporarily blocking accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from entering a guilty plea in a deal that would spare him the risk of execution for al-Qaida’s Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

It is the latest development in a long struggle by the U.S. military and successive administrations to bring to justice the man charged with planning one of the deadliest attacks ever on the United States. It stalls an attempt to wrap up more than two decades of military prosecution beset by legal and logistical troubles.

A three-judge appeals panel agreed to put on hold Mohammed’s guilty plea scheduled for Friday in a military commission courtroom at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In an unusual move, the Biden administration is pushing to throw out a plea agreement that its own Defense Department had negotiated with Mohammed and two 9/11 co-defendants.

Mohammed is accused of developing and directing the plot to crash hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another of the hijacked planes flew into a field in Pennsylvania.

A small number of relatives of some of the nearly 3,000 victims already had gathered in Guantanamo to hear Mohammed take responsibility in one of the most painful chapters in American history.

“It’s very upsetting,” said Elizabeth Miller, who lost her firefighter father, Douglas Miller, in the attacks and leads a group of 9/11 families supporting the plea agreements and opposing execution for the defendants.