Blow to the prosecution: Confessions of 9/11 mastermind ruled inadmissible
The military judge ruled that the pressure exerted by the CIA on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed continued during FBI interrogations at Guantanamo. Mohammed was captured in 2003 and interrogated in secret CIA prisons, where he underwent 163 rounds of waterboarding. The prosecution presented the confessions as the central evidence in the case, and is now considering appealing the decision.
An American military judge rejected on Friday the confessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is accused of planning the September 11 attacks, ruling that they were not given of his own free will and that they cannot be used against him in court, reported the New York Times. This is a severe blow to the prosecution, which presented the confessions as the most central evidence in the trial being conducted against him.
The prosecution presented the interrogations conducted with Mohammed in 2007 at the American naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as the most important evidence in its possession, but the judge, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Sharma, ruled that the confessions he gave there to FBI agents are inadmissible.
"The prosecution has not proven, to the required standard, that Mohammed's statements to the FBI were made voluntarily," wrote Sharma in the summary of a 45-page decision.
The decision itself was not immediately released to the public, and according to the report, its unclassified content was approved by several lawyers who saw it.
Sharma listed several reasons for his decision, primarily his determination that the severe and prolonged psychological pressure exerted on him by the CIA continued even while he was interrogated at Guantanamo, years after he was interrogated in the agency's secret detention centers. The judge further determined that FBI agents deliberately refrained from reading him the Miranda warning: that he has the right to remain silent, that he is entitled to consult with an attorney, and that anything he says to them may be used against him in court.
Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and interrogated by the CIA in secret prisons outside the US, in interrogations that included 163 rounds of waterboarding, and was held without contact with the outside world until he was transferred to Guantanamo in 2006. The prosecution itself had initially excluded the statements he made in his first interrogations from the case, and relied only on the confessions given later to the FBI.
The prosecutor in the case said that his team is reviewing the decision and will decide "in the near future" whether to appeal. The judge gave the prosecution five days to decide, with the possibility of extending it by five more. An appeal will delay the case even further.
Two days ago, the judge set the start of the trial for June 5, 2028, a date that may change. The trial became possible after a federal appeals court overturned in July 2025, by a majority vote, plea deals that would have prevented Mohammed and two other defendants from the risk of being sentenced to death.
Without the confessions, the prosecution will have to rely on documents, intercepted phone calls, and other transcripts of conversations, and these are also subject to dispute. However, the US claims that the detention doctrine at Guantanamo allows it to hold Mohammed indefinitely as part of the war on terror, even without a trial and conviction.
Mohammed is accused of conceiving the plan in the nineties, presenting it to Osama bin Laden, and assisting in the selection and training of the terrorists. The attacks killed nearly three thousand people in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon, in the deadliest terror attack ever carried out on US soil.
