WASHINGTON: A US appeals court on Friday scrapped 9/11 chief suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s plea agreement that would have taken the death penalty off the table and helped conclude the long-running legal saga surrounding his case.

The agreement had sparked anger among some relatives of victims of the 2001 attacks, and then-US defense secretary Lloyd Austin moved to cancel it last year, saying that both they and the American public deserved to see the defendants stand trial.

Plea deals with Mohammed as well as two alleged accomplices —Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al Hawsawi — were announced in July last year.

The decision appeared to have moved their cases toward resolution after years of being bogged down in pre-trial manoeuvrings while the defendants remained held at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba.

But Lloyd Austin withdrew the agreements two days after they were announced, saying the decision should be up to him, given its significance.

He said that “the families of the victims, our service members and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out in this case”.

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2025