Kristen Breitweiser has spoken out again about the agonizing wait for justice, saying the 9/11 conspirators at Guantanamo Bay “prefer to remain at Gitmo to live out their days.”
Breitweiser, whose husband Ron died on the 94th floor of the collapsed South Tower, has spent 25 years pushing for accountability. “We have been robbed of justice for the murder of our loved ones,” she said. “It’s 25 years later and the high-level detainees will never see any kind of trial.”
The military tribunal system has produced delay after delay. An Air Force colonel who was in college on 9/11 now serves as presiding judge over cases that have dragged on for more than two decades. Issues surrounding evidence obtained through CIA torture at black sites have repeatedly derailed proceedings against the accused plotters.
The four men facing capital charges include Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind who served as a top lieutenant to Osama bin Laden in al Qaeda. Walid bin Attash, a bin Laden bodyguard who allegedly cased U.S. Airline security before the hijackings, also faces execution. Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, accused of acquiring travel documents for the hijackers, and Ammar al-Baluchi, who allegedly helped fund and organize the attacks, round out the group facing the death penalty.
A trial date finally came just before this year’s anniversary: June 2028. Breitweiser dismissed it immediately. “It’s just more of the same,” she said. “Delays, delays, delays.”
The prison population has shrunk dramatically from its peak of 780 detainees. The Bush administration released roughly 540; President Obama freed 200; President Biden transferred 25; and President Trump, across two terms, has released only one man to Saudi custody. Fifteen of the most dangerous remain, including several 9/11 plotters and Abu Zubaydah, a bin Laden facilitator who supervised training for some hijackers in Afghanistan.
Some detainees still seek parole, claiming innocence or expressing remorse. Critics warn of the risks. A recent Office of National Intelligence report found that 234 freed detainees resisted rehabilitation and returned to jihad. The Taliban’s renewed control of Afghanistan has amplified those fears.
Obama once proposed transferring remaining prisoners to federal courts and prisons inside the United States. A fierce public backlash killed the plan, leaving the military tribunal as the only viable path forward.
Breitweiser has proposed an alternative form of accountability. “Since the high-value detainees will never be put to death,” she said, “they should be made available to answer questions from the 9/11 widows and children.” She explained that families have specific questions for Mohammed about connections to Saudi Arabia, where the relatives are suing the government over its alleged role in sponsoring the attacks.
“Gaining clarity and information would provide a sense of closure and enable the 9/11 widows and children, like myself, to have a better understanding of what really did and did not happen when it comes to that horrific morning and the cold-blooded senseless murder of our loved ones,” Breitweiser said.
The 9/11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon, and in a Pennsylvania field. The hijackers, armed with box cutters and airline tickets, turned commercial jets into missiles. The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed within hours; the Pentagon suffered massive damage; passengers aboard United Flight 93 fought back and crashed the plane before it could reach Washington. Bin Laden was killed by U.S. Forces in Pakistan in 2011, but the legal reckoning for his co-conspirators remains unfinished.
Breitweiser reserved her sharpest words for the system’s broader failure. “Three thousand innocent civilians were murdered in broad daylight in lower Manhattan, and not one single full prosecution or indictment to speak of? That’s a disgrace that nobody seems very keen to admit or discuss 25 years later,” she said. “That’s an abject failure of the US so-called justice system that has failed the 9/11 widows and children.”
The June 2028 trial date remains the only scheduled judicial proceeding for the accused 9/11 plotters.