'Architects of 9/11': Where are they now?

Sixteen years after the World Trade center attacks, the case against the alleged ‘mastermind’ and his co-plotters looks as if it will drag on for years – if not decades, defence lawyers told Al Jazeera.

Apart from the hurricanes in the US, the US Navy base in Cuba houses the men detained. Their proceedings have not picked up pace since Trump became the president in January. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad who has been dubbed the “architect of 9/11” along with his four alleged co-conspirators all shall face the death penalty in a case that is still crawling the pre-trial stages.



"It perplexes me that this isn't a cause for more outrage back in the US," Shayana Kadidal, a lawyer on several post-9/11 cases for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal action group, told Al Jazeera. "According to the government, you have the person by far most responsible for planning 9/11 and a couple of people just below him responsible for executing the plot. They've been sitting in detention for the most part of 14 years, without trial, and, by all appearances, any trial is years and years off."

At a hearing in August, prosecutors mooted an early 2019 trial start date, saying it would take between six and eight weeks to lay out evidence that the men planned and aided the hijacking of four passenger jets on September 11, 2001.  They would be tried on the base, popularly known as Gitmo, on charges of terrorism and some 3,000 counts of murder in violation of the law.

They could face execution if convicted by a jury of military officers. They were arraigned in 2012, but the case has bogged down in pre-trial motions as defence lawyers claim they were bugged and spied on and request classified evidence of torture-like treatment in CIA custody.



"There're so many obstacles to trial that I'm not sure they'll ever get there," Nancy Hollander, a lawyer in a separate Gitmo case, told Al Jazeera. Should the men ultimately be convicted, appeals would likely drag on for years longer before reaching the US Supreme Court, she said.

"Let's say by some miracle they're found not guilty, they're not going home," added Hollander. "These are show trials and bad show trials at that."

This story originally appeared on Al Jazeera.