Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial set for June 2028

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, is scheduled to go on trial before a US military court at Guantanamo Bay on June 5, 2028, a court spokesman said Thursday.

The trial at the US naval base in Cuba is also scheduled to include Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi. Prosecutors had asked for a January 2027 start, but the presiding military judge said more time was needed to resolve pretrial disputes.

Mohammed, also known as KSM, has been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2006. He was captured in Pakistan in March 2003 and held in secret CIA facilities for three years before being transferred to the military prison.

His trial has been repeatedly delayed. A plea deal that would have removed the death penalty as a possible punishment was withdrawn last year after protests from relatives of some victims of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Much of the legal dispute in the defendants' cases has focused on whether they can be tried fairly after CIA torture.

Mohammed was considered one of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants before his capture. He has said he masterminded the 9/11 attacks “from A to Z” and has claimed involvement in other plots against the United States, where he attended university.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the September 11 attacks, when hijacked planes hit the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, while another crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

Mohammed also claims he helped in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people, and that he personally beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.

The United States has used Guantanamo to hold militants captured during the “War on Terror” that followed the September 11 attacks. The facility held about 800 prisoners at its peak, but a small fraction remains.