Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's 9/11 Trial Set for June 2028
BREAKING: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, is scheduled to go on trial at Guantanamo Bay on June 5, 2028, a US military court spokesman said.
ERBIL (Kurdistan24) - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, is scheduled to go on trial in June 2028, AFP reported on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026, citing an official.
A spokesman for the US military court at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Mohammed is being held, said the trial would begin on June 5, 2028.
The announcement set a specific opening date for proceedings before the military court, but the brief AFP report did not include further details about the expected duration of the trial, the schedule of pretrial hearings or other procedural steps before the case opens.
A case more than two decades in the making
US military authorities and successive administrations have spent more than two decades attempting to bring Mohammed to trial over one of the deadliest attacks in US history.
Mohammed is accused of developing and directing the plot to hijack commercial airliners and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. A fourth hijacked plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
He will stand trial alongside three alleged accomplices: Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.
The four men are among the last detainees held at the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Plea agreement previously collapsed
The planned trial follows the collapse of a potential plea agreement that would have allowed Mohammed to plead guilty while avoiding the risk of execution.
A federal appeals court last year threw out the agreement. The deal had stipulated life sentences without parole for Mohammed and two of his co-defendants and would have required the men to answer questions from families of the victims about the attacks.
The agreement had been negotiated for two years before former President Joe Biden’s administration repudiated it.
Long-running pretrial disputes
Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and transferred to Guantánamo Bay in 2006. He was charged and arraigned in 2008 on war crimes and murder charges connected to the attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
The prosecution has faced years of legal challenges surrounding the military commissions system. Defense lawyers have also argued that delays are linked to government efforts to conceal details of torture used against detainees at secret CIA prisons before their transfer to Guantánamo Bay.
A 2014 Senate report found that the CIA had used what it called “enhanced interrogation techniques” against Mohammed and other alleged conspirators, including waterboarding Mohammed 183 times.
The June 5, 2028, date now sets a new target for a trial that has repeatedly been delayed, while further pretrial proceedings will determine whether the case reaches the courtroom as scheduled.
Updated by Ahora Qadi, on Aug. 27, 2026, at 4:43pm, More information and a background was added to the article.