9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s plea deal revoked by Defense Secretary, death penalty back on table

A plea deal for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and two accomplices was abruptly revoked on Friday, just two days after it was reached.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the change in a memo relieving Guantánamo Bay war court overseer Susan K Escallier of duty over the capital case.

“I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me,” Austin wrote in the memo, obtained by The New York Times.

The decision effectively canceled the deal — which would’ve seen Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi get life sentences — and put a potential death sentence back on the table.

After the plea deal was announced on Wednesday, some families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 2001 terror attacks said they were disappointed with the decision.

“We waited patiently for a long time. I wanted the death penalty — the government has failed us,” Daniel D’Allara, whose brother, NYPD officer John D’Allara, was killed on 9/11, told The New York Post.

Terry Strada, national chairperson of 9/11 Families United, told The Associated Press she wished the case had gone to a full trial.

“For me personally, I wanted to see a trial,” she said. “And they just took away the justice I was expecting, a trial and the punishment.”

Republican members of Congress also spoke out against the deal.

Earlier Friday, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) opened an investigation into the Biden administration’s role in securing the plea.

The deal was a “gut punch to many of the victims’ families,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) wrote on Friday