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WASHINGTON: A US appeals court on Friday scrapped 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s plea agreement that would have taken the death penalty off the table and helped conclude the long-running legal saga surrounding his case.

The agreement had sparked anger among some relatives of victims of the 2001 attacks, and then-US defense secretary Lloyd Austin moved to cancel it last year, saying that both they and the American public deserved to see the defendants stand trial.

Austin “acted within the bounds of his legal authority, and we decline to second-guess his judgment,” judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao wrote.

Plea deals with Mohammed as well as two alleged accomplices — Walid bin Attash and Mustafa Al-Hawsawi — were announced in late July last year.

The decision appeared to have moved their cases toward resolution after years of being bogged down in pre-trial maneuverings while the defendants remained held at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba.

But Austin withdrew the agreements two days after they were announced, saying the decision should be up to him, given its significance.

He subsequently said that “the families of the victims, our service members and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out in this case.”

A military judge ruled in November that the deals were valid and binding, but the government appealed that decision.

The appeals court judges on Friday vacated “the military judge’s order of November 6, 2024, preventing the secretary of defense’s withdrawal from the pretrial agreements.”

And they prohibited the military judge “from conducting hearings in which respondents would enter guilty pleas or take any other action pursuant to the withdrawn pretrial agreements.”

Much of the legal jousting surrounding the 9/11 defendants’ cases has focused on whether they could be tried fairly after having undergone torture at the hands of the CIA — a thorny issue that the plea agreements would have avoided.

Mohammed was regarded as one of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s most trusted lieutenants before his March 2003 capture in Pakistan. He then spent three years in secret CIA prisons before arriving at Guantanamo in 2006.

The trained engineer — who has said he masterminded the 9/11 attacks “from A to Z” — was involved in a string of major plots against the United States, where he attended university.

The United States used Guantanamo, an isolated naval base, to hold militants captured during the “War on Terror” that followed the September 11 attacks in a bid to keep the defendants from claiming rights under US law.

The facility held roughly 800 prisoners at its peak, but they have since slowly been sent to other countries. A small fraction of that number remains.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan described the presence of militant outfits in Afghanistan as a “challenge” on Friday, calling it a critical hurdle in improving bilateral ties and advancing regional cooperation, even as both countries have tried to re-engage diplomatically in recent months.

Ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan have remained strained since 2023, when Islamabad launched a crackdown on undocumented migrants, mostly Afghans, citing security concerns.

Pakistan has long said militant groups staging attacks in its western border provinces operate from Afghan territory, a claim denied by Taliban officials.

However, the two sides have sought to reset relations recently, agreeing to appoint ambassadors following a tripartite meeting with China and holding additional secretary-level talks in Islamabad earlier this month.

“About the question of sanctuaries in Afghanistan, as I mentioned it remains a challenge, and we are trying to address it in the context of bilateral relations with Afghanistan,” foreign office spokesperson, Ambassador Shafqat Ali Khan, said during his weekly news briefing.

“This remains a critical impediment in preventing the relations to reach their full potential, and further impeding the full development of regional cooperation, particularly when other regions are moving toward greater regional integration involving businesses, investment, road and rail network,” he added.

Khan said the “issue of sanctuaries” was also discussed by the Afghan authorities in the recent talks.

“We stay engaged with the Afghan authorities and approach the dialogue with good faith,” he continued. “In terms of the commonalities between the two countries, two cultures, it should be the best of relationships. But the core point which you flagged remains sanctuaries enjoyed by the terrorists inside the Afghan territory.”

Islamabad has repeatedly urged Kabul to take action against groups such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which it says uses Afghan soil to plan and launch attacks.

The Afghan Taliban, however, have always denied allowing any armed outfits to use their territory to target other countries.