Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, will stand trial before a US military tribunal starting June 5, 2028. Three co-defendants—Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin 'Atash, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali—are also scheduled to face trial alongside Mohammed [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
The trial will begin with jury selection on June 5, 2028, followed 30 days later by opening statements. The proceedings will include the prosecution's case, defense motions, and conclude with a sentencing phase [1, 2, 3, 5]. Military judge Michael Schrama rejected an earlier prosecution proposal to start the trial in January 2027, citing insufficient time to resolve pretrial evidentiary and compliance matters. He said, "A realistic trial date must account for the hearing and resolution of pretrial evidentiary and compliance motions" [1, 2, 3, 6, 4, 5, 7].
Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in March 2003 and held for three years in CIA secret prisons before transfer to Guantanamo Bay in 2006. He is accused of orchestrating the 9/11 hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people by crashing planes into the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field [8, 3, 9, 10, 6, 11, 4, 7, 1, 2, 5]. Mohammed has also claimed involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 2002 beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl, though these claims hold medium confidence [8, 9, 10].
A plea deal that would have allowed Mohammed and two co-defendants to plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty was withdrawn in 2025 by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin amid criticism. A US appeals court upheld the Defense Secretary's authority to revoke the agreement, with judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao stating, "The families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out" [1, 2, 3, 6, 4, 5].
Legal disputes over evidence have delayed the trial for more than two decades. Issues include evidence obtained during CIA detention, where Mohammed was reportedly waterboarded 183 times. On August 28, 2026, Judge Schrama ruled that FBI-obtained confessions from Mohammed are inadmissible due to coercion and failure to inform him of rights, saying, "The prosecution has failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Mohammad’s statements to the FBI were voluntarily given" [12, 4].
Guantanamo Bay, which once held about 800 terrorism suspects, now holds only a small number, including Mohammed [8, 9, 10].
The trial’s jury selection will commence on June 5, 2028, marking a key milestone after nearly 25 years since the attacks and more than two decades of legal wrangling [1, 2, 8, 3, 9, 10, 6, 11, 4, 5, 7].
