“An 11th-hour stay will accomplish nothing but more delay and it will reward the government for its — at best — negligent handling” of the 9/11 prosecutions, Mohammed's lawyers argued in a filing to a District of Columbia federal appeals panel just before midnight. ????? ???????  

Austin unexpectedly renounced the plea agreement after it was announced this summer, and the Biden administration's Justice Department is seeking to block Mohammed's plea from going forward at a U.S. military commission courtroom. ????????????  

Mohammed is due to enter his plea Friday morning in the attacks, in which 19 al-Qaida hijackers smashed airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and another crashed into a Pennsylvania field, killing nearly 3,000 people. Family members of some of the victims are gathered at Guantanamo for the moment. ?????  

Defense lawyers in a filing late Wednesday described Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's attempts to throw out a plea deal that his own military had negotiated and approved as the latest in two decades of “fitful" and “negligent” mishandling of the case by the U.S. military and successive administrations. ????? ???????  

 Lawyers for accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are urging a federal appeals panel to let his scheduled guilty plea Friday n Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, go forward in a plea agreement that would spare him and two co-defendants the risk of the death penalty in al-Qaida's notorious Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ????????????