A Quarter-Century Without a Verdict: Why the 9/11 Trial Keeps Stalling

On August 28, military judge Michael Shrama, presiding at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, ruled that prosecutors cannot use in court the statements that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks — gave to FBI agents in 2007. In the judge's view, the prosecution failed to prove that these statements were made voluntarily, pushing a case that has already dragged on for more than two decades even further from trial.

Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in March 2003 and then held for over three years in secret CIA prisons. According to a US Senate investigation, he was subjected to waterboarding 183 times, deprived of sleep, and forced to endure painful stress positions for hours on end. Prosecutors do not intend to use the statements obtained during that period, which is why, after his transfer to Guantanamo in 2006, the FBI interrogated him again. But the judge also deemed these later statements involuntary, citing the lingering psychological effects of the earlier torture.

A Quarter-Century of Investigation

Nearly three thousand people died in the September 11, 2001 attacks. Besides Mohammed, three other defendants are facing charges in the case: Walid bin Attash, Ammar al-Baluchi (Mohammed's nephew), and Mustafa al-Hawsawi — all accused of providing logistical and financial support to the hijackers.

"The whole case is tainted by politics and by the fact that no one has been held accountable for the torture," attorney Joshua Dratel, who has worked on Mohammed's defense team, told the Associated Press. Yumna Rizvi of the US Center for Victims of Torture added: "Torture doesn't get you truth or justice — it just gets you a case that falls apart."

From Manhattan Back to the Tribunal

The George W. Bush administration set up special military tribunals for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo, and their operation has been mired in legal disputes from the very beginning. Under Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder announced in 2009 that Mohammed and four other defendants would be tried in a regular federal court in Manhattan, not far from the site of the attack. But Congress banned transferring Guantanamo detainees to US soil, and the plan had to be scrapped in 2011 — the case was sent back to the military commission.

In the summer of 2024, a resolution seemed within reach: Mohammed and two other defendants struck a plea deal with prosecutors, agreeing to plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. But just days later, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who oversees the Guantanamo commissions, personally overturned the agreements, citing the exceptional gravity of the case. In July 2025, a Washington appeals court upheld the secretary's authority to do so.

Trial Not Expected to Start Before 2028

The case has once again returned to pretrial proceedings. Judge Shrama has tentatively set the start of the main trial for June 5, 2028 — meaning that, barring further delays, nearly 27 years will have passed between the attacks and the beginning of the trial.

David Raskin, the former federal prosecutor who was slated to lead the prosecution against Mohammed had the case gone to trial in New York, has called the military commissions "a defense lawyer's dream," bogged down in endless disputes over legality. According to him, the US had ample evidence — financial records, intercepted communications, testimony from accomplices — to convict Mohammed in a regular federal court even without the statements obtained under torture. "I believe the trial of Mohammed and the other 9/11 defendants before a military commission will never be completed," Raskin wrote.

Source: seznamzpravy.cz