9/11 Trial Delayed to 2028: Families Face 27-Year Wait for Justice

Twenty-five years after the attacks of September 11, the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—the man accused of masterminding the plot that killed nearly 3,000 people—is scheduled to begin on June 5, 2028. That date, if it holds, will mark almost 27 years between the crime and the start of proceedings. But the word "if" carries real weight here. A military judge recently barred prosecutors from using statements Mohammed made to FBI agents in 2007, ruling that those statements were tainted by the coercive interrogation techniques he had endured in CIA custody years earlier. The government chose not to appeal the decision, fearing that an appeal could jeopardize the already fragile trial date. The judge who set the 2028 date is the fifth military officer to oversee the case since the defendants were arraigned in 2012.

Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and held for years at CIA detention facilities known as black sites, where he was subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, including repeated waterboarding. He and three co-defendants were transferred to Guantánamo Bay in 2006, where they have remained ever since. A fifth defendant, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, is being handled separately after being found mentally incompetent to stand trial. The central legal problem that has haunted this prosecution for over a decade is whether evidence gathered after the torture can be considered voluntary and therefore admissible in court. Defense attorneys argue it cannot. Prosecutors have tried to argue that statements made to a "clean team" of FBI agents should be separable from the earlier coercive interrogations. The recent ruling against the government suggests that argument is failing.

The case has been derailed repeatedly. In 2009, the Obama administration announced that Mohammed and four others would be tried in federal court in Manhattan. That plan collapsed after fierce opposition from New York officials and lawmakers who raised security and logistical concerns. The prosecution was moved back to the military commissions at Guantánamo, where it has remained. In 2024, the defendants reached plea agreements that would have required them to plead guilty in exchange for life sentences rather than face the death penalty. Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin withdrew those agreements, prompting another round of litigation. A federal appeals court later blocked the defendants from entering guilty pleas under the withdrawn deals. The case has also been disrupted by changes in judges, the coronavirus pandemic, and a mountain of unresolved pretrial motions.

For the families of those killed, the accumulation of delays has become its own form of suffering. John Ryan, the former chief of the Port Authority Police Department who spent nine months working on the recovery operation at Ground Zero, later became a commander with the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force. He lost 37 police officers he had worked with during his career, along with civilian colleagues at the Port Authority. "The fact is that they've all admitted their involvement, it's not a question of guilt, it's just a question of the process and the fact that the process has taken 25 years," he said. "Our justice system isn't designed to work that late. It's designed to produce justice in a fair time."

Sean Passananti's father was killed on the 100th floor of the North Tower. "It feels really like a twilight zone and unbelievable that we have to fight for justice for the worst terrorist attack that ever happened on our soil," Passananti said. He has attended the memorial ceremony every year but one since the attacks. Dennis McGinley's older brother Danny worked on the 89th floor of the South Tower. McGinley described the families' grief as an injury that keeps reopening. "It is like the wound never healed, and every year we get salt poured back into that wound," he said. He called on President Trump to "finally close the books on this American nightmare, which is now becoming an American embarrassment."

Ryan noted that the case now spans two generations of victims' families: people who were children when the attacks happened and are now adults, and older parents and grandparents who fear they may never live to see a verdict. The accused plotters have aged at a detention complex that has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars while producing no verdict in the 9/11 case. The military commission is focused on whether Mohammed and the other defendants planned and carried out the terrorist operation. Separately, 9/11 families have brought a civil lawsuit against Saudi Arabia examining whether Saudi government employees or agents helped two hijackers establish themselves in the United States. A trial in that civil case could force testimony and the release of evidence that families believe may clarify how the plot was supported before the attacks, though the Saudi-related allegations are not the charges at issue in the Guantánamo prosecution.

If the current schedule holds, the proceedings would begin in June 2028—16 years after the defendants were arraigned and nearly three decades after the attacks themselves. But the recent ruling barring key FBI statements, combined with the history of delays and legal obstacles, has underscored an extraordinary possibility that families are now confronting: they may still never see a verdict. Ryan put it plainly: "It's like an open sore, and that sore gets even more hurtful when we get to anniversaries."