The new Pentagon chief got a look at Guantánamo Bay’s most infamous inmate in his recent visit to the wartime prison.
During a trip this week to the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth looked in on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Mr. Hegseth said the prisoner looked “fine,” deserved the death penalty, “and I hope he finds justice soon.”
And with that, Mr. Hegseth waded into the legal morass in the long-running case at a sensitive time. A federal appeals court is deciding whether Mr. Mohammed has a valid plea deal to settle his case with a life sentence, instead of facing a death-penalty trial one day.
As defense secretary, Mr. Hegseth is the most senior person over the military commission system, the war court at Guantánamo where Mr. Mohammed and four other men have been charged in a death-penalty case.
The comments were aired Wednesday night on the Fox News network. Mr. Hegseth made them a day earlier to a former Fox colleague, Laura Ingraham, who had accompanied him on the trip, but not to the security zone where Mr. Mohammed is held in the Camp 5 prison.