The U.S. government asked a federal appeals court on Tuesday to stop Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man accused of planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, from pleading guilty on Friday at the war court at Guantánamo Bay.
The filing argued that, contrary to the findings of two lower military courts, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had the authority to retroactively withdraw the government from plea agreements that were submitted at the military court last summer.
On July 31, Mr. Mohammed and two co-defendants signed an agreement with the Pentagon official in charge of the court to plead guilty to war crimes charges in exchange for sentences of life in prison rather than face a death penalty trial. Prosecutors had negotiated the deal for more than two years, but Mr. Austin undid the agreements two days later. Then on Nov. 7, the military judge, Col. Matthew N. McCall, ruled that the secretary acted too late and that the deal was valid.
Tuesday’s move seeking to overturn Colonel McCall’s ruling was the latest to whipsaw the families of the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon, who are divided over how the 12-year-old case should be resolved.
“All it does is drag this situation out for the families,” said Stephan Gerhardt, whose brother Ralph was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center. “What is their end goal here?”
Mr. Gerhardt was at Guantánamo Bay this week to watch the start of the process to resolve the case through guilty pleas. It is expected to span months, including a presentation from prosecutors and testimony from victims of the attacks.
Mr. Gerhardt said he supported resolving the case through guilty pleas that cannot be appealed because he believed that any full trial would be doomed to the uncertainty of years of delay and appeals.
The appeal was signed by Matthew G. Olsen, who runs the Justice Department’s national security division, and Brian H. Fletcher, a deputy solicitor general. They are asking the federal court to intervene in a question that had been handled in the military commission system that was set up after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The petition asked a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to forbid the military judge at Guantánamo from holding a hearing on Friday to question Mr. Mohammed about his understanding of the deal, initiating his guilty plea.
Colonel McCall has sealed the documents that support the plea, and has yet to rule on a motion by news organizations to release it to the public.
In fact, the filing by the Justice Department that was released to the public blacked out details of the plea, and in one instance also redacted a government statute the lawyers were citing as a legal authority for their appeal.
The Justice Department’s lawyers described Friday’s hearing as a point of no return. “The government and the public will lose the opportunity for a public trial as to the respondents’ guilt and to seek capital punishment against three men charged with a heinous act of mass murder that caused the death of thousands of people and shocked the nation and the world,” the filing said.
Colonel McCall summoned the parties to court on Wednesday to discuss the plea deals. On Tuesday night, a three-judge panel of the circuit court gave defense lawyers until Wednesday to respond to the request to halt the proceedings at the end of the week.
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