Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, will stand trial on 5 June 2028, a military judge has ruled, more than 25 years after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
US Air Force judge Lt Col Michael A Schrama ruled on Wednesday that the trial for Mohammed and three co-accused would begin in two years, deciding that a 2027 date sought by prosecutors was too soon and that the trial needed to be "fully ready".
Plea deal rejected
Mohammed had previously agreed to a plea deal in which he would plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, but a federal appeals court rejected the agreement last summer.
The rejected deal, which would have given Mohammed a life sentence without possibility of parole, was reached after two years of negotiation and signed by an official appointed by then-Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, who was reportedly caught by surprise and immediately attempted to revoke it.
Held at Guantanamo Bay
Arrested in 2003, Mohammed has been held at Guantanamo Bay since September 2006. He has previously said he planned the 2001 "9/11 operation from A-to-Z" but refused to plead guilty without assurances that he would not be killed.
Mohammed, a US-educated engineer, was captured along with al-Hawsawi in Pakistan in March 2003. The three set to stand trial alongside him include Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.
25 years since the attacks
This September marks 25 years since hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Virginia, while another hijacked flight crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. More than 3,000 people died in the attacks.
Mohammed is accused of conceiving the idea of training pilots to fly commercial planes into buildings and taking those plans to Osama Bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda.
