A military judge on Friday tossed out the confession that alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave the FBI almost 20 years ago.
Military judge Lt. Col. Michael Schrama ruled that the confession had been made involuntarily after Mohammed “was essentially conditioned by the C.I.A. through torture coupled with years of isolation and solitary confinement,” according to The New York Times.
“The prosecution has failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Mohammad’s statements to the F.B.I. were voluntarily given,” Schrama wrote in his 45-page ruling.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded at least 183 times by the CIA during a single month in March 2003. https://t.co/8MtT24PZLq
— RiderOfKarma (@RiderOfKarma) August 28, 2026
The judge also conceded that Mohammed had been denied access to an attorney “until long after he had confessed and was charged,” the Times noted.
According to the paper, Mohammed “was brutally interrogated by the C.I.A. in secret overseas prisons after his capture in 2003 and held incommunicado until his transfer to Guantánamo in 2006.” The statements he made while overseas had already been excluded from the trial.
Mohammed was later interrogated again in 2007 while at Guantánamo. It was his responses during this round of questioning that were essentially thrown out by Judge Schrama on Friday.
The judge also set a trial date of June 5, 2028, leaving prosecutors with nearly two years to figure out an alternate attack plan.
However, in choosing June 2028 for the trial date, the judge rejected a January 2027 start date preferred by the same prosecutors.
BREAKING: Military judge sets a June 2028 trial date for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. pic.twitter.com/mkeuWDIfnv
— Polymarket (@Polymarket) August 27, 2026
During the 2028 trial, Mohammed will be prosecuted alongside other Sept. 11 suspects, including Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi.
The new trial date was announced after a federal appeals court threw out a potential plea deal last summer.
“The deal, negotiated over two years and approved by military prosecutors and the Pentagon’s senior official for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a year ago, stipulated life sentences without parole for Mohammed and two co-defendants,” the Associated Press reported in July of last year.
The deal was opposed by some family members of the Sept. 11 victims who believed that a trial would allow full discovery, thus allowing them to learn more about the devastating attacks instead of just forgetting about them.
“A plea deal allows this to be tucked away into a nice, pretty package, wrapped into a bow and put on a shelf and forgotten about,” family member Brett Eagleson said at the time. “The only valid way to get answers and seek the truth is through a trial.”
The deal began to fall apart when then-War Secretary Lloyd Austin repudiated it. Attorneys for some of the family members of the victims pushed back by arguing that the deal was already in effect and that Austin was too late.
“A military judge at Guantanamo and a military appeals panel agreed with the defense lawyers,” the AP reported. “But, by a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found Austin acted within his authority and faulted the military judge’s ruling.”
The agreement was then voided.
“Having properly assumed the convening authority, the Secretary determined that the ‘families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out,’” the judges in the case ruled. “The Secretary acted within the bounds of his legal authority, and we decline to second-guess his judgment.”
US appeals court cancels plea deal for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, reopening possibility of death penalty. Judges affirm former Defense Secretary Austin’s authority to reject deal, agreeing victims’ families deserve a full military trial. pic.twitter.com/qxT7xDnSEp
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 11, 2025
Returning to the present, family members of the victims are hoping the newly set trial date is finally it.
“We have been asking for a trial date for 20 years. Hopefully, this time it is for real,” retired NYPD officer Jim Smith, whose wife Moira Smith died responding to the attacks, told the New York Post.
