Nearly twenty years after FBI agents questioned the men accused in the September 11 case at Guantánamo Bay, prosecutors are losing access to the very statements they once hoped would separate the trial from the CIA’s interrogation program.
A U.S. military judge has excluded the 2007 statements of Mustafa al-Hawsawi, a Saudi national accused of helping finance and support the 9/11 hijackers, according to The New York Times.
The ruling means confessions from three of the four defendants now awaiting a joint death-penalty trial have been ruled inadmissible: al-Hawsawi, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi. A decision on similar statements by Walid bin Attash is still pending. The four are currently scheduled to go to trial on June 5, 2028.
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| Guantánamo evidence dispute in the 9/11 case. Image credit: Eastora illustration |
The problem with the ‘clean team’
The FBI interviews at the center of the dispute were conducted in 2007, after the defendants had been transferred from secret CIA detention sites to Guantánamo.
They were supposed to give prosecutors a cleaner source of evidence.
Rather than rely on statements obtained during CIA interrogations, federal agents questioned the prisoners again. Prosecutors later argued that these interviews were separate from what had happened in CIA custody and could therefore be presented to a military jury.
Judges have increasingly rejected that separation.
In al-Hawsawi’s case, the judge found that his statements were not voluntary, according to the Times. He was questioned while shackled in a former CIA detention facility at Guantánamo and was not told that he could remain silent, consult a lawyer or disregard earlier statements obtained under coercive conditions.
The dispute closely mirrors the ruling issued in August against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama found that prosecutors had failed to show Mohammed’s 2007 statements to FBI agents were voluntary, concluding that the effects of earlier CIA coercion had carried into the later interrogation.
Prosecutors later decided not to appeal that ruling, choosing instead to keep the wider case moving toward the 2028 trial date.
A case built around evidence gathered after CIA custody
Al-Hawsawi was captured in Pakistan in March 2003, at the same time as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He was moved through a series of secret CIA detention sites before being transferred to Guantánamo in 2006. A British tribunal reviewing his treatment has documented transfers through CIA facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere before his eventual arrival at the U.S. naval base.
U.S. prosecutors accuse him of handling money and logistical support connected to the hijackers. In a 2007 military tribunal appearance, al-Hawsawi acknowledged contact with several hijackers and receiving money transfers from them, while disputing how much he knew about the plot beforehand.
The government still has other potential evidence.
In Mohammed’s case, prosecutors have pointed to financial records, secretly recorded conversations between detainees at Guantánamo and other documentary material. Similar evidence could take on more weight if the defendants’ FBI statements remain unavailable at trial.
But the confession rulings remove the most direct form of evidence: the defendants’ own words to federal investigators.
Twenty-five years after the attacks, the pretrial fight is still about the CIA years
The September 11 prosecution has been in pretrial litigation since the defendants were arraigned in 2012.
Much of that time has been consumed by disputes over what happened during secret CIA detention, how much of that history can be disclosed in court and whether evidence gathered later was still affected by earlier coercion.
Those arguments have repeatedly pushed the case further from trial.
In August, Judge Schrama rejected prosecutors’ request to begin jury selection in January 2027 and instead scheduled it for June 5, 2028, saying more time was needed to resolve outstanding evidentiary disputes. Even that date remains dependent on the court meeting a series of deadlines.
The case has already taken several other turns. Plea agreements reached in 2024 with Mohammed, al-Hawsawi and bin Attash would have removed the death penalty in exchange for guilty pleas, but the agreements were later withdrawn and eventually struck down in federal court.
That sent the case back toward a capital trial.
Now, as that trial approaches, the government is being forced to prepare for it without statements it spent years trying to preserve.
Three of the four defendants have now had their 2007 confessions excluded.
The fourth ruling — on Walid bin Attash — could determine whether any of the FBI confessions from the joint 9/11 case reach the jury at all.
Sources
- The New York Times — reporting on the exclusion of Mustafa al-Hawsawi’s 2007 statements.
- U.S. Office of Military Commissions — current filings in the joint 9/11 case, including motions concerning al-Hawsawi’s FBI statements and the remaining defendants.
- Associated Press — June 5, 2028 trial date for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Hawsawi, bin Attash and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali.
- The New York Times — earlier ruling excluding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s 2007 FBI confession and prosecutors’ decision not to appeal it.
- U.K. Investigatory Powers Tribunal — documented history of al-Hawsawi’s detention and transfers through CIA facilities.