WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are urging a federal appeals panel to let his scheduled guilty plea Friday in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, go forward in a plea agreement that would spare him and two co-defendants the risk of the death penalty in al-Qaida’s notorious Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Defense lawyers in a filing late Wednesday described Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s attempts to throw out a plea deal that his own military had negotiated and approved as the latest in two decades of “fitful” and “negligent” mishandling of the case by the U.S. military and successive administrations.
Mohammed is due to enter his plea Friday morning
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