A US military judge has ruled that the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will stand trial starting in June 2028, multiple US media outlets reported.
Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, a military commissions judge, rejected a January 2027 start date proposed by prosecutors, scheduling proceedings for roughly 18 months later.
Mohammed will be prosecuted alongside three co-defendants suspected of conspiring in the attacks: Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi.
Mohammed is accused of orchestrating the plot to crash hijacked airliners into the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon, alongside a third hijacked plane that crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Prolonged legal delays
Mohammed was considered one of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants before his capture in Pakistan in March 2003.
He was held in secret CIA facilities for three years before being transferred to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006.
Mohammed was formally charged and arraigned in 2008 with war crimes and murder in connection with the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 9/11 attacks.
The legal process has faced repeated delays as the military commissions system encountered continuous procedural challenges.
Defence lawyers have argued that government efforts to suppress details of torture used at secret CIA black sites contributed significantly to the backlog.
A 2014 US Senate report revealed that the CIA subjected Mohammed to what it termed "enhanced interrogation techniques", including waterboarding him 183 times in what was described as "a series of near-drownings."
The scheduling ruling follows a federal appeals court decision last summer that threw out a proposed plea agreement that would have allowed Mohammed to plead guilty in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table.
