WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to block a plea agreement for accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants that would spare them the risk of the death penalty.

The Justice Department argued in a brief filed with a federal appeals court in the District of Columbia that the government would be irreparably harmed if the guilty pleas were accepted. It said the government would be denied a chance for a public trial and the opportunity to “seek capital punishment against three men charged with a heinous act of mass murder that caused the death of thousands of people and shocked the nation and the world.”

The military judge at Guantanamo Bay and a military appeals panel rejected Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s effort to throw out the plea agreement, saying he had no power to do so after the senior Pentagon official for Guantanamo approved it in July. Mohammed was due to enter his guilty plea on Friday and his two co-defendants next week.

— The Associated Press