A military judge set June 2028 for the trial against the alleged “mastermind” of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been detained since 2006 at the United States naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba.
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“The trial on the merits of the case will begin on Monday, June 5, 2028,” reported this Wednesday Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama, judge of the military commissions.
The decision was made after Schrama rejected the start date proposed by the prosecution, for January 2027, setting the trial for approximately 18 months later.
Mohammed, who was captured in Pakistan in 2003, admitted during an interrogation in 2007 to being the “mastermind” of the attacks, although both he and his associates – Walid bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa al Hawsawi – then reported having been subjected to torture.
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As detailed by NBC, following this he was accused and prosecuted in 2008 for war crimes and murder related to the nearly 3,000 people who died in the September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11.
However, the judicial process has been prolonged for years and Mohammed’s defense lawyers and his associates have argued that the delay is due to what they consider the U.S. government’s efforts to conceal details of the harassment used against detainees in secret CIA prisons, before they were transferred to Guantánamo Bay.
A 2014 Senate report revealed that the CIA had used what it called “enhanced interrogation techniques” against the suspects, including waterboarding Mohammed 183 times, described as “a series of near drownings,” as reported by NBC.
