00:00A plea deal that could let the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 terrorist attacks avoid the death
00:04penalty was upheld by a U.S. military appeals court.
00:08Earlier this year, three men held for decades without trial at the Guantanamo Bay Detention
00:12Center reached an agreement with Pentagon prosecutors to plead guilty and possibly avoid
00:17the death penalty.
00:18The prisoners include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
00:21He is accused of leading the plot to fly hijacked commercial passenger aircraft into the World
00:25Trade Center in New York City and into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
00:30The 9-11 attacks, as they are known, killed nearly 3,000 people and propelled the U.S.
00:34into a two-decade war in Afghanistan.
00:36U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in August rescinded the plea deals.
00:40The Pentagon previously said Austin was surprised by the plea deals and that the secretary was
00:44not consulted because that process is independent.
00:47But in November, a U.S. military judge ruled that Austin acted too late on revoking the
00:51plea deals and that they were still valid.
00:54The order late on Monday by the U.S. military appeals court upheld that ruling.
00:58The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
01:01Mohammed, also known as KSM, is the most widely known inmate at Guantanamo Bay.
01:06The prison was set up in 2002 by then-U.S. President George W. Bush to detain foreign
01:11militant suspects following the September 11 attacks.
01:14Human rights experts, including at the United Nations, have condemned torture at Guantanamo
01:18Bay and elsewhere during the so-called War on Terror and demanded an apology from Washington.
01:25Former President Barack Obama acknowledged in 2014 that the U.S. had engaged in torture
01:29and said it was, quote, contrary to our values.
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