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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court turned down an attempt by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Monday to restore a controversial 2024 plea deal that would have spared him the death penalty for his role masterminding the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Mohammed, often referred to as “KSM,” is set to face a military trial beginning June 5, 2028, after being held for more than two decades at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
There were no noted dissents from the high court’s rejection of Mohammed’s case. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who served in the George W. Bush White House counsel’s office at the time of the terrorist’s capture in 2003, recused himself.
KSM and two co-defendants — Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi — reached a deal with the Office of Military Commissions (OMC) on July 31, 2024, to plead guilty and accept a life sentence without the possibility of parole over the attacks that killed 2,977 people at the World Trade Center, The Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pa.
Two days later, amid a national outcry, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rescinded the agreement, saying only the Pentagon chief could authorize such a deal.
A divided DC appeals court panel upheld Austin’s action last year, leaving the Supreme Court as the Al Qaeda big’s last chance.
The trial of Mohammed has been delayed for almost 25 years due to prolonged disputes over the admissibility of evidence extracted from all three men during so-called “enhanced interrogation” sessions by the CIA.
The back-and-forth led to Mohammed and four other accused being charged in 2008 and recharged four years later.
As recently as August, a military judge threw out statements KSM made about the attacks to the FBI in 2007, four years after his capture, ruling they were not voluntarily given.
Mohammed, described as the “principal architect of the 9/11 attacks” by a bipartisan commission report published in 2004, is charged with 2,977 counts of murder, terrorism, and violations of the law of war, among other offenses.
“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” he was quoted as telling a 2007 US military hearing, claiming he was “very sorry” children were killed in the attack and insisting “I don’t like to kill people.”