Fifteen Years After Guantánamo Hearings Began, 9/11 Plotters Get a 2028 Trial Date

In a nondescript courtroom at Guantánamo Bay, a military judge on Wednesday set August 2028 as the start date for the trial of the four men accused of planning the September 11 attacks. The ruling ends years of procedural paralysis but guarantees that the case will reach a courtroom only after 27 years have passed since the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The latest delay in a saga of delays

The four defendants—Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi—face the death penalty for their alleged roles in the plot. Their arraignment occurred in 2012. Pre-trial hearings have dragged on for more than a decade, snarled by disputes over classified evidence, allegations of CIA torture, and the fundamental question of whether a military commission can deliver fair justice.

What the government calls justice, critics call theater

The Guardian and Axios both reported the development, but the coverage reveals the persistent rift in how the story is framed. Government officials portray the schedule as progress toward accountability for the worst terrorist attack on American soil. Defense lawyers and human-rights groups counter that the entire military-commission system remains tainted by the defendants’ years of secret detention and enhanced interrogation—practices that have already led to the exclusion of key evidence.

The slow pace has turned what should have been a clear reckoning into an international symbol of American legal failure.

The Guardian

Two competing clocks

• Victims’ families have waited 25 years for a verdict they can accept as legitimate—this — that many will see another three-year wait as the final insult.
• The Biden administration had hoped to close Guantánamo; the Trump administration that followed promised swift justice—neither delivered, and now the case stretches into a third decade and a new presidential term.

The military judge’s order sets jury selection for 2028 but leaves open the possibility that plea negotiations could still short-circuit a full trial. Defense attorneys have long argued that a civilian federal court in New York would have resolved the case years ago. Prosecutors insist the commissions are the only venue equipped to handle the classified intelligence at the heart of the plot.

Either way, the men who allegedly conceived and coordinated 9/11 are now in their 50s and 60s. Some victims’ relatives who once demanded execution now simply want the story to end before they themselves die. The 2028 date is less a finish line than another waypoint on a road that has already lasted longer than the war in Afghanistan itself.