The Supreme Court declined Monday to review the Pentagon’s decision to cancel a plea deal with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, whom the government accused of masterminding the 2001 terrorist attacks.
A military commission — a sort of court for war detainees — had accepted the plea deal, but then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin withdrew it. A military judge upheld the plea deal, but a civilian appellate court sided with the Department of Defense.
The justices’ refusal to take the case allows that lower circuit court ruling to stand.
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The high court declined the case without comment.
Mr. Mohammad was caught in a CIA operation in Pakistan in 2003 and has been detained at the military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for two decades.
His case seemed to have reached a resolution with the plea deal in 2024. That would have spared him from the possibility of execution but kept him behind bars for life.
Public outrage prompted Mr. Austin to overrule the military prosecutors who struck the deal.
Mr. Mohammad is now set to go on trial in 2028.
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