9/11 Mastermind's Trial Set for June 2028, 27 Years After the Attacks

The 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks passed this past Friday, September 11, 2026. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man U.S. authorities say masterminded the plot that killed nearly 3,000 people, still hasn't stood trial.

Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, the military judge now overseeing the case, issued an 11-page order in late August setting a trial date of June 5, 2028, according to Military.com and the Associated Press. That's nearly 27 years after hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Schrama rejected the prosecution's request for a January 2027 start, calling it "incompatible" with the pretrial litigation still ahead. He's the fifth judge to preside over this case since Mohammed and his co-defendants were arraigned in 2012, per the AP.

Why the Case Keeps Stalling

Mohammed will stand trial alongside Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi. A fifth co-defendant, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, was found mentally incompetent and is being handled separately, according to Fox News and the AP.

The core problem isn't a lack of evidence. It's how that evidence was obtained.

Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and held in secret CIA prisons for more than three years before arriving at Guantanamo Bay on September 5, 2006. A 2014 Senate report found the CIA waterboarded him 183 times, describing it as a series of near-drownings, according to Military.com.

In late August, Judge Schrama ruled prosecutors can't use statements Mohammed made to FBI agents in 2007, finding they were tainted by his earlier torture, the AP reported. The government chose not to appeal, worried an appeal would blow up the 2028 trial date entirely.

A plea deal negotiated in 2024, which would have taken the death penalty off the table in exchange for guilty pleas, collapsed for good last year after a divided federal appeals court threw it out, according to Military.com. Prosecutors are now back to pursuing a capital case.

What the Families Say

John Ryan, a former Port Authority Police chief who spent nine months on the recovery effort at Ground Zero, told Fox News Digital the delay has become "an open sore" that reopens every anniversary. "We still have not convicted or taken to justice the five people that are being held at Guantánamo Bay," Ryan said.

Sean Passananti, whose father died on the 100th floor of the North Tower, described the ongoing legal limbo as feeling "like a twilight zone," per Fox News Digital.

Terry Strada, national chair of 9/11 Families United, whose husband Tom died at the World Trade Center, told the AP she still wants to see a trial. But she said she'd rather see Mohammed held at Guantanamo indefinitely than accept any deal that removes the death penalty. Strada said she fears that sparing his life could someday make him a bargaining chip for a prisoner swap with Americans held abroad. "It fits the crime and it would prevent that from ever happening," she said of capital punishment.

The Legitimate Legal Fight Underneath the Delay

Defense attorney Joshua Dratel, who has worked to secure Mohammed's legal representation, told the AP the case is "all contaminated by politics and the lack of accountability on torture." U.S. courts generally can't use confessions extracted through coercion, and defense lawyers have spent years arguing the government has tried to keep details of the CIA's treatment of the defendants hidden. That fight over torture evidence is exactly why the case has bounced through five judges since 2012 without a verdict.

Critics on the other side note that a military commission system built specifically to try foreign terrorism suspects, separate from civilian courts and courts-martial, has now taken longer to produce a single verdict than World War II lasted twice over. A brief attempt to try Mohammed in a civilian court in New York City was shut down years ago over security concerns, according to the AP, leaving the commissions as the only path forward.

Both things are true at once. The torture Mohammed suffered in CIA custody created a genuine evidentiary mess that any legal system would have to sort out. And the system built to sort it out has taken a quarter-century to get to a scheduled trial date. Given the case's history, five judges deep and counting, lawyers on multiple sides, including Dratel, doubt that date will actually hold.