A 9/11 trial date has finally been set, and it lands almost 27 years after the attacks themselves. A military judge ruled Wednesday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who has publicly claimed credit for planning the September 11 attacks, will go on trial in the summer of 2028.

The Ruling

Lt. Col. Michael Schrama set proceedings to open on Monday, June 5, 2028. Prosecutors had pushed for something sooner, asking the court to begin in 2027, but the judge concluded that timeline left too little room for the case to be properly prepared.

The decision gives shape to a prosecution that has drifted without a firm calendar for years. Whether it holds is another matter entirely, given how many previously announced milestones in this case have slipped away.

Two Decades in Custody

Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003. He was transferred to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in 2006 and has remained there ever since.

That means by the time a jury hears opening statements, he will have spent roughly a quarter century in American custody without a verdict. Few criminal cases anywhere have stretched so far between arrest and trial.

The Plea Deal That Almost Ended It

The most dramatic chapter in this saga unfolded during the summer of 2024.

In July of that year, Mohammed and two co-defendants held at Guantanamo struck an agreement with military prosecutors. The terms were straightforward: guilty pleas to every charge against them, including responsibility for 2,976 deaths, in exchange for prosecutors abandoning their pursuit of capital punishment. Mohammed would have spent the rest of his life imprisoned at Guantanamo.

For some, the deal offered closure after decades of legal paralysis. For others, particularly among families who lost relatives on September 11, it felt like a betrayal. Criticism came fast and loud.

Within days, then Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stepped in and canceled the arrangement. He explained that a decision carrying this much weight belonged to him personally as the superior convening authority under the Military Commissions Act of 2009, rather than to subordinates who had negotiated it.

Defense attorneys pushed back immediately, arguing the agreements were already binding. The Biden administration responded by taking the fight into federal court to make sure the pleas could not go forward.

The dispute reached a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., which ruled two to one last July that Austin had operated within his legal authority when he tore up the deal.

Why This Case Has Moved So Slowly

The plea controversy is only the most recent obstacle. The underlying reason for more than a decade of delay is far harder to resolve.

Before arriving at Guantanamo, Mohammed and other defendants were held in a network of secret CIA detention sites overseas. What happened at those facilities has hung over every stage of the proceedings. Defense teams have argued that statements obtained through torture cannot lawfully be used, and courts have spent years sorting through which evidence is admissible and which is permanently tainted.

Each ruling on that question has triggered further litigation. Each round of litigation has pushed the trial further into the future. This pattern, more than anything else, explains why a case built on events from 2001 still has not reached a jury.

What Happened on September 11

The morning of September 11, 2001, began like any other weekday in New York City. Then two hijacked commercial airliners struck the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Those crashes were the opening act of a coordinated assault carried out by al-Qaeda, the terrorist network then based in Afghanistan. By the end of the day, close to 3,000 people had been killed and thousands more were injured. The attacks reshaped American foreign policy, security infrastructure, and legal frameworks in ways still visible today.

The Weight of Waiting

For families of the victims, the announcement of a trial date brings a complicated mix of feelings.

Some have spent more than two decades attending hearings, reading filings, and watching deadlines evaporate. A date on the calendar is progress, but it is progress measured in years, not weeks. Many of those who lost parents, spouses, or children have themselves grown old waiting.

Others have argued throughout that the military commission system was never equipped to handle a case of this magnitude, and that a federal criminal court would have delivered a verdict long ago.

What Comes Next

Between now and June 2028 lies an enormous amount of work.

Pretrial motions will continue. Evidentiary disputes tied to the CIA detention program remain unsettled. Classification issues will require careful handling, since much of the relevant material is secret. Any of these threads could unravel the schedule.

Still, the ruling represents something the case has lacked for a very long time: a fixed point on the horizon.

The Bigger Picture

The 9/11 prosecution has become a test of whether the military commission system can actually deliver justice in the most consequential terrorism case in American history.

Supporters of the system argue it was designed precisely for wartime detainees and classified evidence. Critics counter that the results speak for themselves, pointing to a quarter century without resolution.

Whatever the verdict eventually is, the process itself has already written a long and uncomfortable chapter in the American legal record. June 2028 will decide how that chapter ends.