alikKhalid Sheikh Mohammed wanted the Supreme Court to save his life. The Court said no.
On Monday, the justices turned away an appeal from the accused architect of the September 11 attacks and two co-defendants. The three men were trying to restore 2024 plea deals that would have taken the death penalty off the table in exchange for guilty pleas. The Court’s order gave no reasons. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who worked in the Bush White House after 9/11, did not take part.
The result: the men who are accused of planning the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans can still face execution.
How the deal happened
The plea agreements were struck in 2024, under the Biden administration. They were offered and accepted by the Pentagon official who oversees the Guantanamo war court, according to the Jerusalem Post. Republican lawmakers objected, and so did many 9/11 families.
Two days later, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin revoked the deals. “Responsibility for such a decision should rest with me,” he said at the time, according to Axios.
That should have ended it. Instead, it started a two-year legal fight. A military judge ruled that Austin lacked the authority to cancel the deals, and a military appeals court agreed. The judge even scheduled plea hearings.
Then the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit stepped in. In July 2025, a 2-1 panel sided with Austin, ruling that he “indisputably had legal authority to withdraw from the agreements.” Monday’s order lets that ruling stand.
Who’s who
Mohammed’s co-defendants are Walid bin ‘Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. All three have been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2006. They were first arraigned in 2008.
Mohammed is accused of orchestrating the plot to fly hijacked jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. He was captured on March 1, 2003.
Guantanamo, set up by President George W. Bush in 2002 to hold foreign terror suspects, still holds Mohammed as its best-known detainee.
Still no trial
Here is the hard part. Twenty-five years after the attacks, there has still been no trial.
Prosecutors wanted to start in January 2027. A judge said that left too little time for pretrial issues. In August, an Air Force judge set the military trial for June 2028, according to Axios and the Jerusalem Post.
Lawyers for Mohammed and al-Hawsawi, including attorneys from the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union, argued that Austin broke military law. They said his move “prolonged the best chance for finality in the September 11 case in a quarter century.”
The bottom line
A plea deal sparing the accused 9/11 mastermind from the death penalty should never have been signed. Austin was right to tear it up, the D.C. Circuit was right to back him, and the Supreme Court was right to end the argument.
But nobody should celebrate too long. The families of the victims have waited a quarter century for justice, and the system has given them delays, appeals and a deal that nearly let the accused planner of the deadliest terror attack on American soil bargain his way out of the ultimate penalty.
June 2028 is the new date. It needs to hold. Justice delayed this long is already an insult. Justice denied would be a disgrace.