A U.S. military judge on Wednesday set June 2028 as the trial date for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, along with three co-defendants held at Guantánamo Bay.
Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, the presiding military commissions judge, rejected a January 2027 start date sought by prosecutors, instead setting proceedings to begin on June 5, 2028 — about 18 months later than requested. Mohammed will stand trial alongside Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, who are accused of conspiring in the plot.
Mohammed, a Pakistani national, is accused of orchestrating the hijacking plot in which commercial airliners were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington, while a fourth hijacked plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks.
Mohammed was captured in a raid in Pakistan in 2003 and has been held at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006. He was formally charged and arraigned in 2008 on war crimes and murder charges connected to the attacks.
The case has been delayed for years amid extensive pretrial litigation, including defense arguments that the government has withheld details of interrogation methods used against detainees at secret CIA facilities before their transfer to Guantánamo. The proceedings, conducted under the military commissions system established after the attacks, have faced repeated procedural and legal challenges since charges were first filed.
Wednesday’s scheduling order followed a federal appeals court ruling last year that threw out a proposed plea agreement, which would have allowed Mohammed to plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the risk of a death sentence. A divided appeals panel held that the U.S. defense secretary had acted within his legal authority in withdrawing the earlier agreement, saying courts should not second-guess that decision.
The judge’s order also laid out detailed procedural timelines for the trial, including deadlines for post-prosecution motions, defense evidence presentation, and rebuttal arguments.
