The Unfinished 25-Year Quest for Justice: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Trial Stalls

With the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaching, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has not yet been tried and sentenced for his alleged role in the attacks.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) played a significant part in delaying this outcome. Initially, the ACLU argued that the military defense attorneys assigned to represent Mohammed and his co-conspirators lacked adequate experience with capital punishment cases and were insufficient to effectively counter the U.S. government’s legal efforts.

The ACLU deployed its own team of specialized capital defense lawyers at a cost of millions of dollars. This group has maintained an ongoing challenge to the military court proceedings for years.

Mohammed’s legal team raised objections that defendants were not properly informed of their rights and that confessions obtained through waterboarding and other torture by CIA agents before incarceration at Guantanamo Bay are invalid.

The 9/11 families have endured prolonged waits for justice and closure. From the beginning, the ACLU asserted that foreign terrorists should receive the same due process protections and presumption of innocence as American citizens.

Mohammed and his co-conspirators violated international law by conducting mass civilian casualties without warning. However, their legal representatives, including Gary Sowards—who previously represented Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber)—have consistently delayed military prosecutions with pretrial motions and negotiations for plea deals that would avoid the death penalty.

Twenty-five years after the attacks, justice remains further from reach than ever before.

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama, the fifth military judge to preside over Mohammed’s case, issued a ruling two days after setting a June 2028 trial date. The ruling determined that confessions and evidence gathered during interrogations at Guantanamo would not be admissible in court.

Schrama stated that interrogators failed to explicitly inform Mohammed of his right to remain silent and to consult a lawyer, and that what he confessed could be used against him at trial. Additionally, the ruling claims that the torture and isolation experienced by terrorists before their incarceration at Guantanamo conditioned them to provide any information they wished.

Gary Sowards noted Schrama’s ruling “serves as a civics lesson for why the government shouldn’t engage in such shameful conduct.”

The defense has argued that waterboarding and other forms of torture were employed shortly after Mohammed’s arrest in 2003 by U.S. intelligence agents to determine if additional attacks were planned.

In 2024, Mohammed signed a written statement confessing to planning and executing the 9/11 attacks “from A-to-Z.” Prosecutors also possess a hard drive seized during his arrest containing photographs of the 19 hijackers and three letters from Osama bin Laden.

Despite these materials, Schrama’s ruling effectively excludes confessions, making conviction challenging. Prosecutors have not yet announced plans to appeal the decision.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that terrorists tried in military panels are entitled to due process protections comparable to other defendants. Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissent, warned that such requirements would place an “impossible task” on military courts during a time of conflict with radical Islamists.

The prolonged legal battles against Mohammed and his co-defendants demonstrate the practical difficulties of applying due process standards to foreign terrorists who claimed credit for their actions before capture.

Recently, the defense team attempted to revive a 2024 plea deal that would have spared Mohammed from the death penalty.