A military commission has scheduled a 2028 trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused organizer of the September 11 attacks, more than two decades after his capture. Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and later transferred to the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where pretrial proceedings have continued for years.
Lawyers say disputes about evidence obtained after torture, classified information and the rules governing military commissions could prevent the trial from beginning on schedule. A proposed plea agreement would have imposed life imprisonment while removing the possibility of execution, but that agreement collapsed after executive and judicial intervention.
An earlier plan for a civilian trial in New York was abandoned amid political opposition and security concerns, returning the case to the military system. The government has not produced a final verdict, sentence or public evidentiary record resolving all charges against Mohammed and his co-defendants.
Military commissions use procedures distinct from federal courts and have repeatedly litigated how constitutional protections and war powers apply to the detainees. Torture can compromise statements and derivative evidence, requiring judges to decide what may be admitted and whether later interrogations were genuinely independent. Families of victims have expressed differing views about trial, plea resolution and the death penalty, so no single outcome represents all relatives.
At the edition deadline, the 2028 date remains a judicial schedule rather than a guarantee, and pending motions could change both timing and the admissible evidence. The next documented developments will be pretrial rulings on torture-tainted evidence and classified material and any renewed plea negotiations or appellate intervention before 2028.