The Court of Appeal is launching an agreement on advocacy for the presumed attacks on September 11 attacks

Washington – A divided Federal Court of the call on Friday threw an agreement that would have allowed Accused on September 11 Mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to plead guilty in an agreement Stop it the risk of execution For Al-Qaida attacks in 2001.

The decision of a panel of the Federal Court of Appeal in Washington, DC, cancels an attempt to conclude More than two decades of military proceedings assailed by legal and logistical problems. He reports that there will be no rapid end to the long struggle of the American soldiers and successive administrations to court the man responsible for planning one of the deadliest attacks of all time in the United States.

The agreement, negotiated over two years and approved by military prosecutors and the senior Pentagon official for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a year ago, stipulated the perpetuity penalties without parole for Mohammed and two co-accused.

Mohammed is accused of Develop and direct the plot To crash into lines diverted in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another of the diverted planes flew to a field in Pennsylvania.

Relatives of the victims of September 11 were divided on the advocacy agreement. Some have opposed it, saying that a trial was the best path to justice and to obtain more information on attacks, while others saw it as the best hope of bringing the painful case to a conclusion and obtaining responses from defendants.

The advocacy agreement would have forced men to respond to any persistent Questions that the families of the victims have On attacks.

But the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin repudiated the agreementSaying that a decision on the death penalty in an attack as serious as on September 11 should only be taken by the defense secretary.

The lawyers of the accused had argued that the agreement was already legally in force and that Austin, which served under President Joe Biden, acted too late to try to throw it away. A military judge in Guantanamo and a military appeal committee agreed with defense lawyers.

But, by a 2-1 vote, the American court of appeal for the circuit of the Columbia district judged that Austin had acted within its authority and criticized the decision of the military judge.

The committee had previously suspended the agreement while he considered the appeal, Posed for the first time by the Biden administration And then continued under President Donald Trump.

“Having correctly assumed the competition authority, the secretary determined that” families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see trials of the military commission carried out “. The secretary acted within the limits of his legal authority, and we refuse to undergo his judgment, “wrote Judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao.

Millett was appointed by President Barack Obama while Rao was appointed by Trump.

In a dissent, judge Robert Wilkins, appointed by Obama, wrote: “The government has not entered a country of countries to prove clearly and undoubtedly that the military judge made a mistake.”

Brett Eagleson, who was one of the family members who opposed the agreement, called on Friday’s appeal decision “a good victory, for the moment”.

“A plea agreement allows this to be hidden in a pretty pretty package, wrapped in an arc and putting a shelf and forgetting,” said Eagleson, who was 15 when his father, director of the shopping center, John Bruce Eagleson, was killed in the attacks.

Brett Eagleson was not moved by the provisions of the agreement so that the defendants answer questions from the families of September 11; He wonders how truthful men would be. In his opinion, “the only valid way of obtaining answers and seeking the truth is by a trial” and the search for facts before the trial.

Elizabeth Miller, who was 6 years old, when the attacks killed his father, the firefighter Douglas Miller, was one of those who supported the agreement.

“Of course, growing up, a trial would have been great at the start,” she said. But “we are in 2025, and we are still at the preliminary stadium.”

“I really do not think that a trial is possible,” said Miller, who also favored the agreement due to his opposition to the death penalty in general.