US plea agreements for the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks revoked

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the most well-known inmate at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Photo / Getty Images

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked plea deals agreed with the man accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks and two accomplices.

The Pentagon said on Wednesday the plea deals had been entered into but did not elaborate on details.

A US official said they almost certainly involved guilty pleas in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table.

However on Friday, Austin relieved the Pentagon’s Guantanamo war court’s authority to enter into pre-trial agreements in the case and took on the responsibility himself.

“Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements,” Austin wrote in a memo on Friday.

Many Republican lawmakers, including House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, strongly criticised the plea deals.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the most well-known inmate at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, which was set up in 2002 by then-US President George W Bush to house foreign militant suspects following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Mohammed is accused of masterminding the plot to fly hijacked commercial passenger aircraft into the World Trade Centre in New York City and into the Pentagon.

The 9/11 attacks killed nearly 3000 people and plunged the US into what would become a two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.

Plea deals had also been reached by two other detainees: Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.