Khalid Sheik Mohammed, accused of masterminding 9/11 attacks, set for military tribunal trial in 2028

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, accused of masterminding 9/11 attacks, set for military tribunal trial in 2028

Schedule includes co-defendants, after deal that would have guaranteed life sentences fell through

A U.S. air ‌force judge on Wednesday ordered Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, to face trial before a military tribunal in June 2028, along with three co-defendants.

The trial-scheduling order entered by the air force's Lt.-Col. Michael Schrama ​marked the latest milestone in a military prosecution beset by ​two decades of legal deadlock surrounding the four detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Last month, a U.S. appeals court refused to allow Mohammed and two of his ​co-defendants — Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin 'Atash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi — to plead guilty under agreements that would have spared them the death penalty.

The ⁠appellate decision reversed decisions ⁠of a military judge and the U.S. Court of ‌Military Commission Review in support of the plea deal.

The agreement had been offered last year and accepted by the official who oversees the Pentagon's Guantanamo war court, only to be revoked in 2024 by Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary at the time under Democratic President Joe Biden. Some Republican lawmakers expressed outrage at the potential of a deal that would spare his life if convicted.

Under Schrama's 11-page order, Mohammed and three co-defendants, which also includes Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, will stand trial starting on June 5, 2028. A fifth man who was part of the case was deemed too mentally ill to stand trial.

Schrama rejected the prosecutors' proposal to open ⁠the ⁠trial in January 2027, saying that would ​leave too little time for the "resolution of pretrial evidentiary and compliance motions."

Schrama is the fifth military judge to oversee the case since Mohammed was captured in 2003 in Pakistan. It appeared a trial would take place in 2021, but it had been scheduled before the COVID-19 pandemic emerged.

The admissibility of some evidence has been a source of legal wrangling, with Mohammed and others subjected to torture at CIA detention sites.

Guantanamo's legacy of torture lives on for former detainees

Relatives of 9/11 dead fear alleged mastermind will never face trial

The 9/11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people, including 26 Canadian citizens. Al-Qaeda, which the U.S. designated a terrorist entity in 1999, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Mohamned is accused of orchestrating the plot to fly hijacked passenger jetliners into the World Trade Center in New York City and into the Pentagon. Another plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

He remains the most well-known inmate in Guantanamo's detention facility, where it was decided foreign militant suspects would be housed in the months following the attacks. Hundreds were held there, but at last report, only 15 remain after convictions and repatriations of detainees to their native countries.

Mohammed's nephew, Ramzi Yousef, is imprisoned in Colorado after being convicted of orchestrating a 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center which left six people dead.