Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and three men alleged to have helped carry out the plot are now slated to face trial in 2028, after a case marked by years of legal detours and institutional delays that one former prosecutor compared to “Frankenstein’s zombie court.”
A military judge on Wednesday scheduled the trial to begin June 5, 2028, while also laying out a series of deadlines intended to move the proceedings forward. For families who lost loved ones on 9/11, the timeline underscores a long-running source of anguish: Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators have been held at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for more than 20 years without a completed trial.
Michael Lebowitz, a former prosecutor with the Guantánamo military commissions, said the central obstacle is not the strength of the evidence against the accused terrorists, but the machinery built to prosecute them.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, has been held at Guantánamo Bay since 2003. Mohammed and three of his alleged co-conspirators are expected to stand trial in June 2028, nearly three decades after the terror attacks. (Getty Images)
“It’s the system and how it evolved and was created. And it’s also an issue of Guantánamo Bay itself, where Gitmo is an adequate, albeit expensive, option for things like detaining suspected war criminals and even migrants,” Lebowitz told News Outlet.
He said even routine proceedings require an unusually cumbersome operation. “The problem is that we used to call it the traveling circus because, in order to even conduct the smallest court hearing, everybody has to go to Washington, D.C., and get on an airplane,” Lebowitz said. “I’m talking judges. I’m talking prosecutors, defense counsel, witnesses and court people.”
The prosecution of Mohammed, along with Walid bin Attash, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Ammar al-Baluchi, has remained stalled for decades as the parties battled through complex legal disputes, including unsuccessful attempts to settle the case through plea deals.
The newly set 2028 trial date gives the case its clearest roadmap in years. The military commission has spent much of the pretrial phase sorting through disputes over evidence and other legal questions that must be resolved before the accused can be tried on the merits, News Outlet previously reported.
This Jan. 21, 2009 sketch reviewed by the U.S. military, shows, from top left, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad; Walid bin Attash; Ramzi bin al Shibh; Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, also known as Ammar al Baluchi, and Mustafa al Hawsawi attend a hearing at the U.S. Military Commissions court for war crimes at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (AP Photo/Janet Hamlin, Pool)
Mohammed, a Pakistani citizen, is accused of masterminding the attacks in which hijackers crashed commercial airliners into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon. A fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to overtake the hijackers.
The case has had more than 10 judges, Lebowitz said, meaning lawyers have had to keep relitigating the same “mundane” issues. Lebowitz, an Army veteran, participated in a number of cases in Guantanamo, including the 9/11 case and the bombing of the USS Cole.
“What I found was that the way the system has kind of been set up and how it evolved and turned into, it’s essentially a candy store for defense lawyers, where the judges don’t have teeth to control the courtroom like you would in federal court,” he said. “It just goes from there where defense lawyers can really grease up the system and grease up the gears and really grind it to a halt.”
One issue prosecutors will have to iron out is whether to seek the death penalty, Lebowitz said. Even if Mohammed and the other suspected terrorists are condemned to death, it’s highly unlikely to be upheld, he said.
Two flags flutter on a fence in front of lower Manhattan and One World Trade Center at the Tear Drop 9/11 Memorial at sunset on June 13, 2026, in Bayonne, New Jersey. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)
“You’re dealing with cases where, essentially, the defense lawyers would put the CIA on trial for their treatment of detainees after 9/11,” he noted.
Despite some of the suspected 9/11 suspects finally getting their day in court, families of the victims also want Saudi Arabia to be held responsible.
“I think we’d ask the same question about the case against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whose agents supported al-Qaeda and the terrorist hijackers, too, after they arrived in the U.S., Terry Strada, national chair of 9/11 Families United, told News Outlet.
In 2024, Mohammed, bin Attash and al-Hawsawi agreed to admit their roles in the terror attacks in exchange for serving life sentences and avoiding the death penalty. While some 9/11 families supported the idea, others blasted the deal.
Amid the criticism, the Biden administration withdrew the plea deal, resulting in more litigation.
