Lawyers for three alleged 9/11 terrorists fumed Wednesday at Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s decision to revoke plea deals that would’ve spared their clients the death penalty, calling the move “corrupt.”
“We have had an unprecedented act by a government official to pull back what was a valid agreement,” Walter Ruiz, a lawyer for Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, said during a hearing in Guantanamo Bay, according to CNN.
“For us, it raises very serious questions about continuing to engage in a system that seems so obviously corrupt and rigged,” he added.
Austin, 70, scrapped plea deals last week that were extended to Hawsawi, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed by the Office of Military Commissions, which is prosecuting the case.
The pre-trial agreements sparked a furor among family members of 9/11 victims and survivors of the attacks, with many slamming the deals as a miscarriage of justice and arguing that the three alleged 9/11 co-conspirators should face trial and be subject to the death penalty if found guilty.
The defense secretary defended revoking the plea deals on Tuesday, telling reporters that he did not take the decision “lightly.”
“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 during a joint press conference with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Australian officials.
“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,” he 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.”
At Wednesday’s hearing, which was scheduled before the plea deals were announced and then later withdrawn, Ruiz argued that the agreements were “years” in the making, and made “ in good faith … only to have that taken away.”
The agreement was the result of more than two years of negotiations. Ruiz noted that parties, including the prosecution, had worked “for years … in good faith” to reach the pretrial agreement, “only to have that taken away.”
Gary Sowards, a defense attorney for Mohammad, argued at the hearing that Austin lacked the authority under the military’s Manual for Military Commission to scrap the plea deals because the alleged terrorists had “begun very important, substantive, specific performance” to hold up their end of the deal.
Sowards further indicated that he intends to “explore” how Austin may have been “coerced and influenced” to revoke the agreements.
“We should not gratify the chaos that is resulting from this precipitous decision,” he said.
Prosecutor Clayton Trivett told the judge that the government had not yet worked through “the issues raised” by the defense.
“’We want to consult with people’ — that sounds like ‘we want to get our stories together,’” Sowards said of Trivett’s comments.
“There is no story that says what happened on Aug. 2 was authorized after what happened on July 31.”
A senior defense official told CNN that Austin “exercised his own independent judgment” when striking the plea deals and that the Pentagon chief “acted lawfully.”
