9/11 Alleged Mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Trial Set for June 2028

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will finally face trial in June 2028, a military judge decided this week—nearly a quarter-century after the attacks he is accused of orchestrating. Mohammed has been in custody since his capture in 2003, held at Guantanamo Bay since 2006, making his case one of the longest-running prosecutions in American legal history.

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama set the trial to begin on June 5, 2028, rejecting prosecutors' request for a 2027 start date as premature. The decision closes one chapter in a legal odyssey marked by false starts, revoked agreements, and fundamental disputes over what evidence can be used against the defendant.

The most recent upheaval came in July 2024, when Mohammed and two other alleged 9/11 conspirators reached a plea agreement with military prosecutors. Under the deal, all three would plead guilty to charges including the murder of 2,976 people in exchange for removing capital punishment from the table. Mohammed would have received a life sentence at Guantanamo. The agreement seemed to offer a resolution to a case that had stalled for years—but it lasted only days. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin revoked the deal, citing his authority as the superior convening authority under military law. Austin wrote that a decision of such magnitude required his personal approval, not that of lower-ranking officials. The move drew sharp criticism from some families of 9/11 victims, who felt their voices had been excluded from the process.

The Biden administration then took the unusual step of asking federal court to block the plea deal, arguing that Austin had acted within his legal rights. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., agreed in a 2-1 decision last July, upholding the Defense Secretary's power to revoke the agreement.

Beneath these procedural battles lies a deeper legal wound. The prosecution has been hamstrung for more than a decade by questions about evidence obtained through torture. Mohammed and the other defendants were held at CIA "black sites" before arriving at Guantanamo, and the admissibility of statements and information gathered during that period remains contested. Military judges have grappled with how to proceed when the foundation of the case may rest on coerced testimony and interrogation methods that the United States has since disavowed.

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two struck the Twin Towers in New York City, one hit the Pentagon, and one crashed in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed and thousands more were wounded. Mohammed, who has described himself as the mastermind of the plot, has been accused of directing the operation from abroad. The attacks transformed American foreign policy, national security law, and the lives of countless families who lost loved ones that day.

Now, with a trial date set for 2028, those families face the prospect of waiting another two years for the case to reach a courtroom. The delay reflects not indifference but the genuine complexity of prosecuting a case built partly on evidence obtained through methods the nation has come to regard as torture. The trial, when it finally begins, will test whether justice can be served when the path to it has been so thoroughly compromised.