WASHINGTON– A military judge ruled that plea deals reached by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants are valid, vacating an order of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to scrap dealsa government official said Wednesday.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the order from the judge, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, has not yet been publicly released or officially announced.

Unless government prosecutors or others try to challenge the plea deals again, McCall’s ruling means the three 9/11 defendants could soon plead guilty in the US military courtroom at Guantanamo Bay. , Cuba, taking a dramatic step towards the conclusion of the long process. government prosecution underway and with legal problems in one of the deadliest attacks against the United States.

The plea deals would spare Mohammed and two co-defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, the risk of the death penalty in exchange for guilty pleas.

Government prosecutors had negotiated the deals with defense attorneys under government auspices, and the top military commission official at the Guantanamo Bay naval base had approved the deals.

The plea deals in the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, sparked an immediate political backlash from Republican lawmakers and others after they became public this summer.

A few days later, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a brief order rescinding them. The plea deals in potential death penalty cases involving one of the most serious crimes ever committed on American soil were a momentous step that should only be decided by the defense secretary, Austin said at the time.

The agreements, and Austin’s attempt to reverse them, have generated one of the most tense episodes in a US process marked by delays and legal difficulties. That includes years of ongoing pretrial hearings to determine the admissibility of the defendants’ statements, given their years of torture in CIA custody.

The Pentagon is reviewing the judge’s decision and had no immediate further comment, said Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary.

The New York Times was the first to report the ruling.

Military officials have not yet posted the judge’s decision on the Guantanamo military commission’s online site. However, a legal blog that has long covered the prosecutions from the Guantanamo courtroom said McCall’s 29-page ruling concludes that Austin lacked legal authority to throw out the plea deals.

The ruling also calls the timing of Austin’s move “fatal,” after the top Guantanamo official had already approved the agreements, according to a blog called Lawdragon.

Complying with Austin’s order would give the defense secretaries “absolute veto power” over any act with which they do not agree, which would be contrary to the independence of the official presiding over the Guantanamo trials, according to the legal blog. McCall in the ruling.

While families of some of the victims and others insist that 9/11 prosecutions continue through trial and possible death sentences, legal experts say it is not clear that can ever happen. If the 9/11 cases ever clear the hurdles of trial, verdicts and sentences, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit would likely hear many of the issues in the course of any sentencing appeal. of death.

The issues include the CIA’s destruction of interrogation videos, whether the revocation of Austin’s plea deal constituted unlawful interference, and whether the men’s torture tainted subsequent interrogations conducted by “clean teams” of FBI agents who They did not involve violence.

___

AP writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.