9/11 Mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Ordered to Trial in June 2028

After more than two decades of legal limbo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will finally face trial. An Air Force judge issued an order on August 27, 2026, setting June 5, 2028, as the start date for the military tribunal proceedings against Mohammed and three co-defendants at Guantanamo Bay. The decision marks a turning point in one of the most protracted prosecutions in American legal history—a case that has been stalled by competing court rulings, political pressure, and the extraordinary complexity of trying detainees under military law.

Mohammed is accused of masterminding the September 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. He remains the most prominent detainee at Guantanamo, the detention facility established in 2002 by President George W. Bush to hold foreign militant suspects in the years following 9/11. Alongside Mohammed, three men will stand trial: Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin 'Atash, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali. All four have been held at the facility for more than two decades without resolution.

The path to this trial date has been anything but straightforward. Last year, a plea agreement was reached that would have allowed Mohammed and two of his co-defendants to plead guilty in exchange for sentences that would spare them from capital punishment. The Pentagon's chief official overseeing the Guantanamo war court accepted the deal. But in August of the following year, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin revoked it amid fierce criticism from Republican politicians who opposed any arrangement that would avoid the death penalty. A month later, a federal appeals court refused to allow the plea agreements to proceed, reversing the decisions of both a military judge and the US Court of Military Commission Review that had supported them.

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama, the Air Force judge, rejected prosecutors' request to begin the trial in January 2027, determining that such an early start would not allow sufficient time to resolve pretrial motions and evidentiary disputes. His eleven-page order instead laid out a detailed timeline beginning in June 2028. The trial will open with the selection of a jury panel composed entirely of military service members, who will apply military justice rules to the case. Opening statements will begin thirty days after the panel is seated. The prosecution will then present its evidence, after which the defense may file motions arguing for acquittal. Both sides will have opportunities to argue and rebut those motions before the defense presents its principal evidence, which cannot begin until sixty days after the prosecution rests its case. The proceedings will conclude with a sentencing phase.

The June 2028 date represents a milestone in a prosecution that has been defined by delay and legal uncertainty. The four men have now spent more than two decades in military detention awaiting trial—years marked by shifting legal standards, competing judicial decisions, and the fundamental question of how the American justice system should handle cases of this magnitude and complexity. What unfolds in the summer of 2028 will be watched closely not only for its verdict but for what it reveals about the limits and possibilities of military justice in the post-9/11 era.