9/11 Trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Set for 2028, 27 Years After Attacks

A recent federal ruling barring certain FBI statements has introduced new uncertainty about whether the military commission proceeding will produce a verdict, leaving victim families in a...

The military commission trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, is now scheduled to begin in 2028, according to Fox News reporting published September 11, 2026. If that date holds, the trial will open approximately 27 years after the attacks.

Mohammed was charged before the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2008. The charges include conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, and terrorism, among others, according to the U.S. Department of Defense Military Commissions public case record.

The case has faced repeated delays across multiple administrations. In 2012, military commission proceedings restarted after an earlier set of charges was withdrawn in 2010 when the Obama administration sought, and ultimately failed, to transfer the case to federal civilian court. Since 2012, pretrial hearings have addressed hundreds of motions spanning classified evidence, the admissibility of statements made during CIA detention, attorney-client privilege disputes, and the mental competency of defendants.

The most recent complication, as reported by Fox News, involves a judicial ruling that bars certain statements made by FBI agents from being introduced as evidence. The ruling's precise scope and the judge who issued it were not fully detailed in the available source material. What document would clarify the ruling is the military commission's publicly released order, which the Department of Defense Military Commissions Activity publishes on its official case docket at mc.mil.

Mohammed was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006 after being held for approximately three and a half years in CIA detention facilities. His statements made during that period have been central to pretrial litigation for more than a decade. Prosecutors and defense attorneys have contested whether those statements, and any derivative evidence, are admissible under the Military Commissions Act and constitutional standards.

Four co-defendants are charged alongside Mohammed: Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, according to the Department of Defense Military Commissions case record. All five have been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2006.

Family members of those killed on September 11, 2001, have described the extended timeline as an ongoing source of distress. Fox News quoted family members using the phrase "open sore" to characterize the effect of the prolonged proceedings. No federal statute sets a deadline by which military commission trials must conclude.

The Guantanamo Bay detention facility currently holds 30 detainees, according to the most recent publicly available Department of Defense detainee population report. The facility's annual operating cost has been reported by the Government Accountability Office at approximately $540 million per year as of its most recent assessment, though per-detainee cost figures vary based on how shared infrastructure expenses are allocated.

The Biden administration did not close Guantanamo Bay despite an executive order issued in its first weeks directing a review of the facility. The Trump administration, across both its terms, maintained the facility's operation and did not advance closure.

What remains unknown is whether the 2028 trial date is firm under the current military commission scheduling order, and whether additional pretrial motions could shift that date further. The full text of the ruling barring FBI statements, including its scope and any government plans to seek reconsideration or appeal, would be contained in the military commission's publicly accessible docket at mc.mil. The precise number of pretrial hearing days logged since 2012 is also a matter of public record in that docket but was not available in the source material reviewed for this report.

Today, September 11, 2026, marks 25 years since the attacks.