Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused architect of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and three alleged co-conspirators will finally face trial in 2028, a military judge ruled Wednesday, setting a date in a case that has languished for more than two decades.
The decision by Lt. Col. Michael Schrama came just two weeks before the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people and profoundly changed the United States and the world.
Mohammed, widely known as KSM and accused of serving as the chief planner of the attacks, has been held along with three other defendants at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as the prosecution has faced years of delays and legal battles.
Mohammed has been in U.S. custody since 2003, when he was captured in Pakistan. The lengthy proceedings against him and the other defendants have repeatedly stalled, preventing the case from reaching a full trial despite the passage of more than two decades since the attacks.
Federal prosecutors had pushed for the proceedings to begin much sooner, asking the military court to schedule the trial for January 2027.
Schrama rejected that proposed timetable, instead setting June 5, 2028, as the date for the long-awaited trial to begin.
