9/11 Mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Gets Trial Date: June 5, 2028, Nearly 27 Years After the Attacks

A military judge set a trial date this week for the man accused of orchestrating the September 11 attacks. Mark the calendar: June 5, 2028.

Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, an Air Force officer serving as the presiding military judge, issued the ruling Wednesday. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three co-defendants, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, will face a military commission at Guantánamo Bay almost 27 years after nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Prosecutors wanted to start sooner, in January 2027. Schrama said no. According to Fox News and Fox 5 New York, he wrote that "a realistic trial date must account for the hearing and resolution of pretrial evidentiary and compliance motions, including the FBI LHM suppression motions." Translation: there are still fights over what evidence prosecutors can even use, and those fights aren't close to over.

A Quarter-Century of Delay

Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003. He's been held at Guantánamo ever since. The case has crawled through pretrial litigation for more than two decades, and this is not the first time a trial date got set and blown up.

CNN reported that a trial was previously scheduled for 2021 and later canceled. Breitbart's coverage of a 2021 hearing, held just before the 20th anniversary of the attacks, shows how deep the dysfunction runs. That session collapsed after two-and-a-half hours because of procedural issues tied to the appointment of the judge at the time, who was the eighth person assigned to preside over the case. Schrama is not that judge. The case has cycled through so many judges that keeping track of who's presiding has become its own subplot.

The core problem hasn't changed in years: the CIA tortured these men in black sites before bringing them to Guantánamo. Mustafa al-Hawsawi's lawyers have said he suffered rectal damage during interrogation, according to Breitbart's report from the 2021 proceedings, and he has needed a cushioned chair in court because of it. That torture record is exactly why the defense keeps filing motions to suppress evidence and why prosecutors keep needing more time to prove their case can stand without relying on anything tainted by it.

The Plea Deal That Got Killed

There's a reason this case is still at square one instead of already resolved. In 2024, military prosecutors struck a plea agreement with Mohammed and two co-defendants that would have taken the death penalty off the table in exchange for guilty pleas and life sentences without parole. CNN reported the deal also would have required the defendants to answer outstanding questions from victims' families about how the attack was planned.

Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, under the Biden administration, moved to withdraw the government's support for that deal. A federal appeals court ultimately threw the agreement out, per CNN. Families of 9/11 victims were split on the deal at the time. Some wanted the certainty of a conviction and answers about the plot. Others wanted a trial, a public reckoning, and the possibility of execution. Neither group has gotten what they wanted yet, and both are still waiting.

What the Delay Actually Buys

The defense's argument for more time isn't frivolous. If evidence obtained through torture gets thrown out on appeal after a conviction, the entire case could unravel and force a retrial or dismissal, further delaying any resolution for victims' families. Getting the evidentiary rulings right now, before trial, is the government's best shot at making a conviction actually stick.

But 27 years is a long time for anyone to still be waiting on a verdict. Some family members of 9/11 victims have died without seeing this case resolved. Mohammed and his co-defendants remain confined at Guantánamo, which under multiple administrations, Republican and Democrat, has kept the facility open specifically to hold cases like this one.

Schrama's order lays out a detailed sequence: jury selection begins the same day as trial, June 5, 2028; opening statements 30 days after commission members are empaneled; prosecutors present their case first, followed by a 14-day window for defendants to seek a finding of not guilty, then more rounds of motions and responses before the defense presents its own evidence 60 days after the prosecution rests.

Every one of those deadlines is a place this can slip again. The 2021 date collapsed. Nothing here guarantees 2028 survives contact with the next suppression motion, the next judge rotation, or the next appeal.