Military judge sets 5 June 2028 for the 9/11 tribunal trial
Air Force Lt. Col. Michael A. Schrama pushed the start 18 months past the January 2027 date prosecutors wanted. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three co-defendants have been at Guantánamo since 2006. A plea deal that would have dropped the death penalty was thrown out last year.
Guantánamo Bay2 min read
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A U.S. Air Force judge on Wednesday set 5 June 2028 as the start date for the military trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three men accused of plotting the 11 September 2001 attacks. Lieutenant Colonel Michael A. Schrama wrote that prosecutors’ preferred January 2027 date left too little time to settle disputes over what evidence can go before the panel.
The four defendants are Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. They have been held at the U.S. naval station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since September 2006. Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi on 1 March 2003. He has said in earlier proceedings that he planned the “9/11 operation from A-to-Z.”
The case has been in pretrial hearings since a 2012 arraignment. A trial listed for 2021 was cancelled. Last year a federal appeals court threw out a plea agreement under which Mohammed would have admitted guilt in exchange for a sentence that avoided execution. Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had already revoked a version of that deal after Republican criticism.
How Schrama structured the calendar
The 11-page order says the proceeding opens with selection of a panel of service members who act as the jury under military-commission rules. Opening statements start 30 calendar days after the panel is seated. The defence presents its main case 60 calendar days after the prosecution rests. A sentencing phase follows any findings of guilt.
The extra 18 months are meant for fights that have already consumed years: which statements taken after CIA detention can be used, which witnesses can appear, and how classified material is screened. Prosecutors have appealed rulings that stripped self-incriminating statements from at least one co-defendant on the ground that they were the product of torture. Those appeals sit on the critical path.
The four men are among the last detainees still at the base. Families of victims can watch from a gallery behind glass at Camp Justice or from closed-circuit sites on the U.S. East Coast. Fewer than 180 families have made the trip in the years of pretrial work.
Why 2028 can still slip
Schrama noted that the date depends on the case hitting interim deadlines. A change of judge, a new appellate ruling on the plea, or a fresh fight over the death penalty could push the start again. The United States has now spent more than two decades trying to try the man it calls the architect of the attacks that killed 2,977 people in New York, Arlington and Shanksville.
June 2028 is 26 years and nine months after the attacks, and almost 22 years after the four men arrived at Guantánamo. The order does not decide guilt. It only fixes a date that the last four judges failed to make stick. The first test is whether the evidence disputes close before that summer rather than swallow it.
