NEW YORK CITY — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged self-described architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, is now scheduled to go on trial in June 2028, a military judge ruled Wednesday, setting a date nearly a quarter-century after the terrorist attacks that killed thousands.
Mohammed was arrested in 2003 and has been detained at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay since 2006.
“Trial on the merits shall begin on Monday, 5 June 2028,” Lt. Col. Michael Schrama wrote in his ruling.
Military prosecutors had pushed for proceedings to begin in 2027, but Schrama concluded that timeline would move too quickly.
The new trial date is the latest turn in a long-running and complicated legal battle, one that has already included a disputed plea deal that was later withdrawn.
In July 2024, Mohammed and two other Guantanamo-held defendants in the 9/11 case reached an agreement with military prosecutors to plead guilty to all charges, including the murder of 2,976 people, in exchange for removing the possibility of the death penalty.
As part of that arrangement, Mohammed would have received a life sentence and remained imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.
The deal quickly drew backlash from some relatives of 9/11 victims, and within days, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin moved to revoke it.
“I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority under the Military Commissions Act of 2009,” Austin wrote.
After attorneys for the defendants objected, the Biden administration later took the matter to federal court in an attempt to continue to block the plea deal.
Last July, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled 2-1 that Austin had acted within his authority to revoke the deal.
The prosecution of Mohammed and other alleged 9/11 plotters detained at Guantanamo has been delayed by more than a decade over concerns about the admissibility of evidence gathered through torture when they were previously detained at the CIA’s “black sites.”
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, two hijacked passenger jets flew into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, marking the start of a series of coordinated attacks that day against the United States by the Afghanistan-based terrorist group al-Qaeda. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day and thousands more were injured.
Copyright © 2026 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.
