US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has reversed a plea agreement reached this week with the man accused of being the “mastermind” of the attacks. 11 SeptemberKhalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his accomplices, according to a memo signed Friday by the official.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said this week that the deals would almost certainly include guilty pleas in exchange for ending the death penalty. He added that a request for life imprisonment was possible..

Mohammed is the most famous prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, a prison created by then-US President George W. Bush to harboring suspected foreign fighters after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Its population peaked at about 800 inmates and then began to decline, and it currently holds 30 detainees.

Mohammed is accused of plotting to hijack commercial airliners and fly them into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon. The September 11 attacks, as they are known, They left almost 3 thousand dead and plunged the United States into a two-decade war in Afghanistan.

Their interrogations have long been the subject of intense scrutiny. A 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” found that Mohammed was waterboarded at least 183 times..

Two more detained They also reached a plea agreement.: Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi, according to a Pentagon statement released this week.

The three men were initially charged jointly. and were indicted on June 5, 2008, and then, according to a Pentagon statement, were again jointly indicted and indicted on May 5, 2012. (RTS)