{"id":332486,"date":"2026-08-29T04:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T04:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/332486\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T04:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T04:17:14","slug":"judge-axes-khalid-sheikh-mohammeds-confession-over-gitmo-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/332486\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge axes Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confession over Gitmo torture"},"content":{"rendered":"

A military judge on Friday threw out a key confession made by the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9\/11 attacks<\/a> \u2014 in a major blow to the feds that could derail the already long-delayed case.<\/p>\n

Head plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed\u2019s 2007 statements made to FBI investigators were not voluntarily given, trial judge Lt. Col. Michael Schrama wrote in a bombshell ruling.<\/p>\n

The US military did not make the decision public \u2014 citing a \u201csecurity review\u201d \u2014 but sources familiar with its contents said the judge axed Mohammed\u2019s confessions from the case in the ruling, saying the admitted terrorist was subject to \u201csevere coercion\u201d from FBI agents.<\/p>\n

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is pictured in 2022..<\/p>\n

\u201cThe prosecution has failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Mohammad\u2019s statements to the F.B.I. were voluntarily given,\u201d Schrama concluded, according to the sources.<\/p>\n

The decision\u00a0comes just days after Schrama\u00a0set Mohammed\u2019s trial for June 2028<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 with the 25th anniversary of the world-altering Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, looming in two weeks.<\/p>\n

The head military prosecutor overseeing the case, Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh, said\u00a0<\/a>that he would review the ruling and \u201cmake a decision on whether to appeal in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n

An appeal could threaten to delay the long-simmering case yet again,\u00a0as appeals of similar rulings have taken years to work their way through various courts.<\/p>\n

KSM, the Sept. 11 mastermind, is shown shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan on March 1, 2003. AP<\/p>\n

Victims\u2019 families have long feared that Mohammed\u00a0and his alleged fellow 9\/11 plotters could die behind bars at Guant\u00e1namo Bay before being found guilty in a court of law.<\/p>\n

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

The cases of\u00a0Mohammed and alleged partners-in-crime \u2014 Walid bin Attash,\u00a0Mustafa al-Hawsawi and\u00a0Ammar al-Baluchi\u00a0\u2014 have 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

The Twin Towers are seen after they were struck by planes flown by Al Qaida terrorists, as viewed from the 37th floor of the southernmost building of Waterside Plaza on the East River in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Prosecutors eventually agreed to not use evidence from torture interrogations of Mohammed and the other men at secret CIA prisons after the accused plotters were apprehended in 2003. <\/p>\n

But they had planned to use Mohammed\u2019s statements from his 2007 interview as a crucial piece of evidence at his trial, court papers show.<\/p>\n

The judge has yet to rule on whether similar confessions from bin Attash and al-Hawsawi are admissible in court.<\/p>\n

Victims\u2019 families have long feared that Mohammed\u00a0and his alleged fellow 9\/11 plotters could die behind bars at Guant\u00e1namo Bay before being found guilty in a court of law. AP<\/p>\n

The cases of all three men nearly came to a dramatic close in late 2024,\u00a0when they agreed to plead guilty<\/a>\u00a0in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. <\/p>\n

But amid public outcry from some victims\u2019 families, Biden administration officials abruptly changed course and tried to cancel the deal, leading to years more of litigation without a trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The news of Schrama\u2019s Friday decision was first reported by\u00a0The New York Times.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A military judge on Friday threw out a key confession made by the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9\/11…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5301,125074,124543,57,9,11,10,58],"class_list":["post-332486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-9-11","tag-guantanamo-bay","tag-khalid-sheikh-mohammed","tag-metro","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\/332486","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=332486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}