Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will not face trial until 2028, a military judge has ruled.
The man accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks, now 59, has spent more than two decades in US custody since his capture in Pakistan in March 2003. His trial is now scheduled to begin on June 5, 2028, at Guantanamo Bay, where he has been held since September 2006.
Prosecutors had pushed for a January 2027 start date. The judge determined that timeline did not allow enough time to resolve outstanding pretrial issues. The 2028 date will allow further time to sort through matters of the court, including resolving any disputes about the evidence that will be put forward.
Mohammed, born in Kuwait in 1965, was an engineer educated in the United States. He studied at Chowan College before transferring to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering in December 1986. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a teenager and later joined Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda in 1999.
In the past, Mohammed alleged that he planned the “9/11 operation from A-to-Z.” He is accused of conceiving the idea of training pilots to fly commercial planes into buildings and taking those plans to bin Laden, who was eventually killed in May 2011. According to the 9/11 Commission, bin Laden approved the operation in 1998 or 1999.
Mohammed was identified by US authorities as a major al-Qaeda suspect in the aftermath of the attacks. He was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on March 1, 2003, in a joint Pakistani-US intelligence operation, and subsequently transferred to US custody. Mohammed later told CIA interrogators that he was in an internet café in Karachi, Pakistan, monitoring the September 11 attacks as they unfolded. After the attacks, he returned to a hideaway apartment.
He was captured along with his alleged accomplice Mustafa al-Hawsawi. His other alleged accomplices include Walid bin Attash and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, who were all named in court documents.
Mohammed previously reached a plea deal under which he would admit guilt in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. Last summer, a federal appeals court overturned the agreement. The ruling comes after an appeals court ordered the judge to reconsider his earlier decision.
In the viral moment that continues to shape US national security and justice debates, hijackers flew passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Virginia on September 11, 2001. Another flight was hijacked but crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people died in the attacks, and victims are still being identified using DNA technology. September this year marks 25 years since those attacks.
The trial is now set to start on June 5, 2028.