Plea agreements with three Sept. 11 suspects are revoked by the Pentagon commander

The plea agreements made earlier this week with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man suspected of planning the September 11 attacks, and two accomplices—who are being detained at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba—were rescinded by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday.

The plea agreements have been reached, the Pentagon said on Wednesday, without providing further information. According to a U.S. official, they most likely involved guilty pleas in return for the death sentence being removed from consideration.

But on Friday, Austin assumed control of the case and stripped Susan Escallier, the war court supervisor at the Pentagon, of her power to reach pre-trial settlements.

“Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements…,” Austin stated in a document.

Numerous Republican legislators, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, harshly denounced the plea agreements.

The most well-known prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, established in 2002 by then-President George W. Bush to hold suspected foreign militants after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, is Mohammed.

Mohammed is charged with organizing the scheme to crash commercial passenger planes that have been taken over into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York City. The so-called 9/11 attacks resulted in around 3,000 fatalities and propelled the US into the Afghan war, which lasted for two decades.

Two additional prisoners, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi and Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, had also struck plea agreements.