Carol D’Allara is speaking out against the latest delay in the 9/11 military trial, calling the 25-year wait for justice “unconscionable.”
D’Allara, whose husband NYPD officer John D’Allara died in the attacks, told The Post that the newly postponed timeline leaves her deeply skeptical. “Who knows if it’ll even happen then, since they’ve already changed the date numerous times,” she said. Her doubt follows a ruling last month by Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, the fifth military judge to oversee the case, who set a June 2028 trial date and then immediately complicated it by barring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s 2007 confession from evidence.
Maggie McDonnell-Tiberio, whose emergency service NYPD officer husband Brian McDonnell died in the attacks, shares that anguish. “So many family members have passed in the past 25 years. How sad that these people didn’t live long enough to see justice served,” she told The Post. “Twenty-five years is too long to wait.” McDonnell-Tiberio said that 25 years “seems like a lifetime ago,” and the anniversary has brought renewed pain through resurfaced footage. “With the anniversary, there are so many videos popping up again. Every time I see a video of the towers collapsing, I imagine Brian falling to his death,” she said.
Janice Tietjen, whose son Port Authority police officer Kenneth Tietjen died on 9/11, has channeled her frustration into action. She and her husband Kenneth have blanketed their Middletown, New Jersey neighborhood with more than 800 posters reading “September 11th, 25 years. Still no justice,” Tietjen told The Post she lacks confidence in the new timeline. “I don’t have a lot of confidence that it will happen in two years,” she said. Her stance on punishment is pragmatic rather than focused on execution. “I don’t have a strong opinion on the death penalty. As long as the people responsible for these attacks, go away for the rest of their life to a place where they will be treated like prisoners and stop being pampered,” she said.
Mohammed, the self-proclaimed architect of the deadliest terror attacks on American soil, and four alleged al-Qaida associates have been held at Guantánamo Bay since their capture in Pakistan in 2002 and 2003. Rather than facing immediate trial, they were first sent to a secret CIA “black site” network where Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times, according to the Department of Justice. He eventually told interrogators, “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” and also confessed to decapitating Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and involvement in other plots. The FBI re-interviewed Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators at Guantánamo in 2007, producing the confession Schrama has now excluded as torture-tainted.
The case’s procedural history is littered with abandoned approaches and judicial turnover. Mohammed and co-defendants Walid bin Attash, Ammar al-Baluchi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Mustafa al Hawsawi were arraigned in 2008 in a newly created military court. President Barack Obama’s administration proposed moving the trial to Manhattan federal court in 2009, prompting fierce backlash from some victims’ families. Retired firefighter Joe Holland, whose son Joseph III died in the north tower, told The Post at the time, “This is insane. They’re going to make a mockery of the whole court system 10 blocks away from the World Trade Center. They’re going to scream for holy war in America.” The administration abandoned the New York plan in 2011. A 2021 trial date fell through due to COVID-19 disruptions, and bin al-Shibh’s case was separated in 2023 after a judge found him mentally unfit.
The Biden administration attempted to break the deadlock in 2024 with a plea deal sparing Mohammed and two co-defendants the death penalty, scheduling a lengthy hearing for January 2025 where families would finally confront the plotters. Some relatives welcomed the prospect of resolution, but others demanded capital punishment. “I wish those responsible could be handed over to the families of those they murdered. Let us deliver their punishment,” McDonnell-Tiberio said. “Anything less than that is too kind.” Retired NYPD officer Jim Smith, whose wife NYPD officer Moira Smith died responding to 9/11, told The Post, “The death penalty is the most severe punishment and that is what they deserve: the maximum punishment.” Biden’s team then tried to scrap the plea deal months before the 2024 election amid political pressure, generating still more litigation. Prosecutors said earlier this month they will proceed to trial without Mohammed’s confession rather than appeal Schrama’s ruling and face further delay.
The trial is scheduled to begin in June 2028 at Guantánamo Bay.