Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Friday relieved the overseer of the war court at Guantánamo Bay and revoked a plea agreement reached earlier this week with the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two alleged accomplices....In taking away the authority, Mr. Austin assumed direct oversight of the case and canceled the agreement, effectively reinstating it as a death-penalty case.Because of the stakes involved, the “responsibility for such a decision should rest with me,” Mr. Austin said in an order released Friday night by the Pentagon.“Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pretrial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024.”
That's what I'm talking about. 'You are relieved and we're going to do it right' is something we need to hear a lot more often pointed at the senior officers corps. Well done.
5 comments:
Might get Biden to remember his name.
Never met the man, but my respect for him just went up quite a bit.
juvat
Might want to reserve that respect, juvat. What this sounds like to me is that Joe Biden mandated that Gitmo be closed before the end of his administration, and the only way to do that would be to get the prisoners left to either plead or be convicted. The only plea that they'd agree to is "time served" (or something very close to it) and repatriation to Qatar (or someplace... which, in fact, is not that far off from what actual murderers might get in federal prison (i.e. ~23 years, then parole). And so the military commission processed the orders and offered the deal.
... But then, that would have the prisoners leaving Gitmo to their retirement villas in Qatar immediately before the election, which would be a black eye for Harris. So Austin steps in to hit the brakes, as Biden has been given the 25th-on-a-discount and Austin now takes orders from Harris.
What happens after the election-- does Austin just re-instate the deal, as the political issue is moot? Is Austin even going to be in any position to carry anything out? (Trump wins, and he's out in mid-January; Harris wins, and quite possibly she'll want her own appointee in the job.) Do we just have another military commission appointed, and spend yet more years spinning our wheels on this? No administration has been willing to hold even a semblance of a trial, due to the "nuclear meltdown" option of acquittal, or propaganda of a "show trial" in the international news, or whatever.
Execution isn't going to happen, not with how that would look; prison in the US would open up federal habeas corpus, ditto. Prison in another country? We know that previous detainees ended up back on the battlefield in short order. So what outcome for this are you expecting as the "good" one? I don't see any good outcome as possible. This one was cross-threaded basically from the start, trying to do peacetime due process and standards on illegal combatants. Austin is doing the bidding of his (new) boss, but he has no actual solution here.
--Janet
The solution might be to put it to a real trial. His next boss might be Trump, after all. Even a politician would hold the option open for a while yet.
He is one of those people on a short list to the gallows once his qabal is finished. Enjoy life while he can, he won't have it for long, Mr Austin.
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