{"id":330905,"date":"2026-08-27T10:25:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T10:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/330905\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T10:25:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T10:25:30","slug":"9-11-mastermind-ksm-will-finally-stand-trial-judge-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/330905\/","title":{"rendered":"9\/11 mastermind KSM will finally stand trial, judge says"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0mastermind of the 9\/11 attacks<\/a>\u00a0and three other terrorists held\u00a0on Guant\u00e1namo Bay\u00a0will finally stand trial in 2028, a military judge ruled Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The ruling from Lt. Col. Michael Schrama came just two weeks before the 25th anniversary of the world-altering\u00a0Sept. 11, 2001 attacks,\u00a0which killed nearly 3,000 people.<\/p>\n

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the head plotter, and three of his alleged co-conspirators have been held at the Cuba military base since 2006 in the long-delayed case.<\/p>\n

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9\/11 terror attacks, will stand trial in 2028, a military judge ruled. AP<\/p>\n

Ground Zero of the World Trade Center, where Building 2 exploded and collapsed, on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. Bolivar Arellano\/NY Post<\/p>\n

Government prosecutors requested\u00a0a January 2027 trial date,\u00a0but the judge rejected that bid and set it\u00a0for June 5, 2028,\u00a0citing a slew of pre-trial rulings the court needs to make before the proceedings start.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The case of\u00a0Mohammed, believed to be either 61 or 62 years old, and his alleged partners-in-crime \u2013Walid bin Attash,\u00a0Mustafa al-Hawsawi and\u00a0Ammar al-Baluchi \u2014\u00a0has been notoriously delayed<\/a>\u00a0for decades amid a series of legal squabbles,\u00a0including\u00a0over whether confessions obtained via torture are admissible in court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Past trial dates have come and gone several times, and Schrama is the fifth judge to oversee the case.<\/p>\n

Victims\u2019 families have been outraged that they\u2019ve yet to see justice done, with some relatives telling The Post Wednesday they hope the latest trial date will stand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been asking for a trial date for 20 years. Hopefully, this time it is for real,\u201d said retired NYPD officer\u00a0Jim Smith, whose wife Moira Smith died responding to the attacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Grief and tears are seen on Wednesday, September 12, 2001, on the Brooklyn Promenade looking towards lower Manhattan the morning after the World Trade Center Towers were leveled by terrorists. Tamara Beckwith\/NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0all going to depend on the judge. We\u2019ve been through so many,\u00a0some good, but mostly officers who wanted nothing to do with this case,\u201d Smith said. \u201cSomeone has to man up and take charge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Retired police officer Kathy Vigiano, wife of Det. Joseph Vigiano, who also died on 9\/11, questioned why she and other families still needed to wait another two years for potential closure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have waited 25 years. Why do we have to wait another two years?\u201d she said. \u201cHow much time do you need for pre-trial? Why can\u2019t they start the trial now? It is time for the victims to get justice now!\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStart your day with all you need to know\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMorning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

She also wondered if the current judge would still be on the case when the trial date rolls around, and \u201cif not, what happens?\u201d<\/p>\n

Retired lieutenant John Ryan, who was the commander of the rescue and recovery task force for Port Authority on 9\/11 and the months after, said: \u201cI\u2019m glad they finally picked a date, but two years can be a lifetime for some of the elderly relatives of victims who died that day. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey would like to see justice in their lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

The case nearly came to a close in 2024 when\u00a0Mohammed,\u00a0bin Attash and\u00a0al-Hawsawi\u00a0agreed to a stunning plea deal with the Biden\u00a0administration<\/a>\u00a0in which they planned to admit their roles in the attacks in order to be spared the death penalty and instead serve life sentences behind bars, court records show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some victims\u2019 families supported the plea deal as a way to finally end the case and avoid Mohammed and his fellow terrorists dying in custody before their trial date \u2014 but many others were dismayed, insisting that only\u00a0death<\/a>\u00a0would be an\u00a0appropriate punishment for the perpetrators of the heinous attacks.<\/p>\n

Amid the public outcry, Biden administration officials abruptly changed course and attempted to cancel the plea deal, leading to years more of litigation without a trial.\u00a0A US appeals court\u00a0in June 2025 officially rejected the deal<\/a>, and Mohammed\u2019s lawyers have said they plan to ask the US Supreme Court to intervene.<\/p>\n

Attorneys for Mohammed did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0mastermind of the 9\/11 attacks\u00a0and three other terrorists held\u00a0on Guant\u00e1namo Bay\u00a0will finally stand trial in 2028, a military…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5301,124543,9,11,10,58],"class_list":["post-330905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-9-11","tag-khalid-sheikh-mohammed","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}