US judge sets date for 9/11 defendants to enter pleas

Defence Secretary wants agreements with defendants thrown out in battle over independence of proceedings

The detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. AP

A US military judge at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has scheduled hearings in early January for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants to enter guilty pleas in exchange for life sentences. This comes despite Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin's effort to throw out the plea agreements.

The move on Wednesday by Judge Matthew McCall, an Air Force colonel, in the government's long-running prosecution in the September 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, signals a deepening battle over the independence of the military commission at the naval base at Guantanamo.

Col McCall provisionally scheduled the plea hearings to take place over two weeks starting on January 6, with Mr Mohammed – the defendant accused of coming up with using commercial jetliners for the attacks – expected to enter his plea first, if Mr Austin's efforts to block it fail.

Mr Austin is seeking to throw out the agreements for Mr Mohammed and fellow defendants Walid bin Attash and Mustafa Al Hawsawi, which would put the more than 20-year government prosecution efforts back on track for a trial that carries the risk of the death penalty.

Government prosecutors negotiated the plea agreements under Defence Department auspices over more than two years, and they received the needed approval this summer from the senior official overseeing the Guantanamo prosecutions. But the deals triggered angry condemnation from senators Mitch McConnell and Tom Cotton and other leading Republicans when the news emerged.

Within days, Mr Austin issued an order throwing out the deals, saying the gravity of the 9/11 attacks meant any decision on waiving the possibility of execution for the defendants should be made by him.

Defence lawyers argued that Mr Austin had no legal standing to intervene and his move amounted to outside interference that could throw into question the legal validity of the proceedings at Guantanamo.

US officials created the hybrid military commission, governed by a mix of civilian and military law and rules, to try people arrested in what the George W Bush administration called its “war on terror” after the 9/11 attacks.

The Al Qaeda assault was among the most damaging and deadly on the US in its history. Hijackers commandeered four passenger airliners and flew them into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, with the fourth coming down in a field in Pennsylvania.