A United States military judge has set June 5, 2028 as the start date for the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man accused of planning the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama issued the scheduling order on August 26, rejecting the January 2027 start that military prosecutors had requested. He said the extra time was needed to settle pre-trial disputes, including over what evidence may be put before the court.
Mohammed is due to stand trial alongside Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. All four have been held at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay in southeast Cuba since 2006, and are among the last detainees left there.
Schrama is the fifth judge to preside over a case in which the defendants were first arraigned in 2008. A trial date of January 11, 2021 was set and later abandoned.
Much of the delay stems from the men’s treatment in secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons after their capture in 2003. Three of those sites were in countries that are now EU member states.
A 2014 report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee found that Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning 183 times, some of it at a facility at Stare Kiejkuty in northeast Poland. Amnesty International has said bin Attash was held at the same site.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2014 that Poland had breached the European Convention on Human Rights by hosting the prison. In May 2018 the Strasbourg court issued comparable judgments against Romania and Lithuania over sites codenamed Detention Site Black and Detention Site Violet.
Each state was ordered to pay €100,000 in damages to the detainee who brought the case. Neither has concluded a criminal investigation into who authorised the arrangements.
The European Parliament has called repeatedly for the camp to be shut, adopting resolutions in June 2006 and in February 2009, days after Barack Obama ordered its closure. That order was never carried out.
Mohammed and two co-defendants agreed in July 2024 to plead guilty in return for life sentences without parole, removing the death penalty from the case. Then US defence secretary Lloyd Austin withdrew from the agreements two days later.
A divided federal appeals court in Washington upheld that withdrawal in July 2025, ruling that Austin had the authority to act. The Supreme Court is weighing whether to review that decision, according to Axios.
The 2028 date remains provisional and depends on both sides meeting a series of deadlines. Opening statements would follow 30 days after the panel is empanelled.
