The Supreme Court refused Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s bid to restore a plea deal sparing him death for masterminding 9/11, his military trial now set for 2028.
In a quiet order from Washington on Monday, the justices turned away the effort by the man long described as the principal architect of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. No dissents were noted. Justice Brett Kavanaugh recused himself.
The decision leaves standing the cancellation of a July 31, 2024 agreement that would have let Mohammed and two co-defendants plead guilty and take life without parole. That deal is gone. A military trial is scheduled to begin June 5, 2028, at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Mohammed has been held for more than two decades.
New York Post reporting detailed the path that brought the case to the high court and the charges still pending against him: 2,977 counts of murder, plus terrorism and law-of-war violations, among other offenses.
On July 31, 2024, the Office of Military Commissions reached plea agreements with Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. They would admit guilt. They would accept life sentences with no chance of parole. The death penalty would be off the table.
Two days later, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rescinded the agreements. Austin said only the Pentagon chief could authorize a deal of that kind. A divided panel of the D.C. appeals court later upheld his action.
Mohammed tried to revive what Austin had killed. The Supreme Court said no.
The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, killed 2,977 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pa. A 2004 bipartisan commission report called Mohammed the “principal architect” of those attacks. He was captured in 2003, charged in 2008, and recharged four years later.
At a 2007 U.S. military hearing, Mohammed spoke in plain terms about his role.
“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,”
In the same setting he claimed he was “very sorry” children were killed and insisted, “I don’t like to kill people.”
Those statements sit alongside a separate fight over evidence. As recently as August, a military judge threw out statements Mohammed made to the FBI in 2007 about the attacks, ruling they were not voluntarily given. Disputes over the admissibility of material from CIA interrogation sessions have helped push the trial back for almost 25 years.
Mohammed remains at Guantanamo. The military commission process is still the venue. Co-defendants bin Attash and al-Hawsawi were part of the same short-lived 2024 plea package. With the Supreme Court out of the picture on restoration, the case moves forward under the charges that include those 2,977 murder counts.
Kavanaugh’s recusal tracked his earlier service in the George W. Bush White House counsel’s office around the time of Mohammed’s 2003 capture. The rest of the Court left the lower rulings in place without noted dissent.
Families of the dead have watched plea talks, rescissions, appeals, and evidence fights stretch across administrations. The practical result is unchanged: the man the 2004 commission labeled the principal architect still has not faced a full military trial on the merits of the death-eligible case built against him.
Austin’s rescission kept capital punishment available. The D.C. appeals court backed that call. The Supreme Court declined to second-guess it. The June 5, 2028 start date is now the next fixed point on a timeline that already runs from 2001 through capture, charges, a two-day plea experiment, and years of litigation over what evidence a jury of officers may hear.
Justice delayed this long tests any claim that the system has treated the 2,977 murdered with the seriousness their killers earned. The plea deal that tried to take death off the table is finished. The trial is not.
