Prosecutors to head to 9/11 trial without mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s key confession

Military prosecutors are willing to go without a key confession by the self-described mastermind of the 9/11 attacks — in order to avoid further delaying the long-awaited trial now set for summer 2028.

The US government decided not to appeal the recent bombshell ruling by a military judge that barred Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s 2007 statements to the FBI from being used at trial.

“An appeal could jeopardize the hard-earned June 5, 2028, trial date,” the feds wrote to victims’ families in a letter Friday — exactly a week before the 25th anniversary of the world-altering attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, sources familiar with the matter told The Post.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammad is pictured in Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba in February 2017. AP

Appeals of similar rulings have taken years to work their way through various courts, part of the series of delays that have left relatives of victims dismayed as year after year goes by without a conviction.

The cases of Mohammed and alleged partners-in-crime Walid bin Attash, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Ammar al-Baluchi have notoriously dragged on for decades amid a series of legal squabbles, including over whether confessions obtained via torture are admissible in court. 

Prosecutors eventually agreed to not use evidence from torture interrogations of Mohammed and the other men at secret CIA prisons after the accused plotters were apprehended in 2003.

But they had planned to use Mohammed’s confession taken at Guantánamo Bay — where he’s been held since 2006 — as a crucial piece of evidence to be presented to a jury panel of military members, court papers show.

Military judge Lt. Col. Michael Schrama set the June 2028 trial date in the case last month — before issuing his ruling axing Mohammed’s statements from the case days later.

The military did not make the decision public — citing a “security review” — but sources familiar with its contents said the judge ruled that the admitted terrorist was subject to “severe coercion” from his years of CIA torture at secret “black site” jails. Schrama also noted that Mohammed was not offered a chance to speak with an attorney, according to the sources.

The twin towers of the World Trade Center burn behind the Empire State Building in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. AP

The military has argued that it has other evidence of Mohammed’s guilt, including phone logs and financial records tying him to the al Qaeda terrorists that carried out the hijacking plots.

Mohammed had been set to admit his role orchestrating the heinous attacks in 2024 when he and two of his alleged al Qaeda cronies agreed to a stunning plea deal with the Biden administration that would have spared them the death penalty.

Amid the public outcry from some victims’ families over abandoning the death penalty in favor of life sentences, Biden officials abruptly changed course and attempted to cancel the deal, leading to years more of litigation without a trial.