The death penalty will remain an option - for now - for the mastermind of 9/11 after the Biden administration temporarily blocked his guilty plea.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is viewed as the architect of the 9/11 attacks in which airliners were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another hijacked plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks.
The Biden administration successfully convinced a three-judge appeals panel to temporarily stop Mohammed's guilty plea, the Associated Press reported. The deal had been scheduled for Friday at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The move was unusual in that the U.S. Defense Department had negotiated the plea deal.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin believes the defense secretary should ultimately decide the death penalty issue in a matter as serious as 9/11, but defense attorneys for Mohammed say that is already in effect, the AP reported.
Mohammed's attorneys said the move by Austin is just the latest issue in two decades of mishandling the case, stating that Austin had no legal authority to throw out the deal, the AP reported.
The next date in the case is now set for Jan. 22, after Donald Trump's inauguration Jan. 20.
