US SC snubs bid to revive plea deal for 9/11 mastermind

The US Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a bid by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, to revive a 2024 agreement that would have spared him the death penalty in exchange for a guilty plea - a deal scrapped by former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The justices turned away appeals by Mohammed and two co-defendants who had also signed plea agreements of a lower court's ruling that upheld Austin's decision to void the deals. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected an argument that Austin, who served under former President Joe Biden, had acted too late.

The Supreme Court's action marks the latest milestone in a military prosecution of the detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that has been beset by two decades of legal gridlock.

In August, a US Air Force judge set the trial for Mohammed and his co-defendants for June 2028.

Mohammed remains the most well-known inmate at the Guantanamo detention facility, which was set up in 2002 by then-US President George W. Bush to house foreign terrorism suspects following the 9/11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people. Mohammed is accused of orchestrating the plot to fly hijacked passenger jetliners into the World Trade Center in New York City and into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

Monday's Supreme Court action "clears the path for holding those responsible for the September 11 attacks accountable.