U.S. appeals court tosses plea deal for accused mastermind of 9/11 attacks
Source: Global News
A divided federal appeals court on Friday threw out an agreement that would have allowed accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to plead guilty in a deal sparing him the risk of execution for al-Qaida’s 2001 attacks.
The decision by a panel of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., undoes an attempt to wrap up more than two decades of military prosecution beset by legal and logistical troubles. It signals there will be no quick end to the long struggle by the U.S. military and successive administrations to bring to justice the man charged with planning one of the deadliest attacks ever on the United States.
The deal, negotiated over two years and approved by military prosecutors and the Pentagon’s senior official for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a year ago, stipulated life sentences without parole for Mohammed and two co-defendants.
Read more: https://globalnews.ca/news/11285168/sept-11-masterminds-plea-deal-tossed-us-court/
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Mohammed has made at least 31 confessions:[108]
The February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City
The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon using hijacked commercial airliners
A failed "shoe bomber" operation
The October 2002 attack in Kuwait
The beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl
The 2002 Bali bombings, Pady's and Sari's club bombings in Bali, Indonesia
A plan for a "second wave" of attacks on major U.S. landmarks after the 9/11 attacks, including the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) in Chicago, the Empire State Building in New York City, and what has been reported as the Plaza Bank Building in Seattle, although there is no Plaza Bank Building; there is a Safeco Plaza and Columbia Center, the city's tallest skyscraper
Plots to attack oil tankers and U.S. naval ships in the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Gibraltar and in Singapore
A plan to blow up the Panama Canal
Plans to assassinate Jimmy Carter
A plot to blow up suspension bridges in New York City
A plan to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago with burning fuel trucks
Plans to destroy London Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben in London
A planned attack on many nightclubs in Thailand
A plot targeting the New York Stock Exchange and other U.S. financial targets
A plan to destroy buildings in Eilat, Israel
Plans to destroy U.S. embassies in Indonesia, Australia and Japan in 2002
Plots to destroy Israeli embassies in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Australia
Surveying and financing an attack on an Israeli El-Al flight from Bangkok
Sending several "mujahideen" into Israel to survey "strategic targets" with the intention of attacking them
The November 2002 suicide bombing of a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet leaving Mombasa Airport
Plans to attack U.S. targets in South Korea
Providing financial support for a plan to attack U.S., British and Jewish targets in Turkey
Surveillance of U.S. nuclear power plants in order to attack them
A plot to attack NATO's headquarters in Europe
Planning and surveillance in a 1995 plan (the "Bojinka plot"
to bomb 12 American passenger jets
The planned assassination attempt against then-U.S. President Bill Clinton during a mid-1990s trip to the Philippines
"Shared responsibility" for a plot to kill Pope John Paul II
Plans to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
An attempt to attack a U.S. oil company in Sumatra, Indonesia, "owned by the Jewish former [U.S.] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger"
