Judge Tosses Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Key 9/11 Confession. Here’s Why

​Days before the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a military judge excluded what prosecutors called their best account from the man accused of planning them.

Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama ruled Aug. 28 that statements Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave FBI agents at Guantanamo Bay in January 2007 were involuntary, according to CBS News.

The ruling suppresses the confession; it does not dismiss the charges or decide Mohammed’s guilt. He and three co-defendants still face a capital military commission now scheduled to begin in June 2028.

Why the FBI Interview Failed

Mohammed’s disputed confession came from four days of FBI questioning roughly four months after years of captivity in CIA black sites.

Prosecutors argued that the new questioners, passage of time and conventional interview methods created a clean break. They said agents told Mohammed he did not have to talk and allowed him to control the interviews’ pace and length.

Schrama found no genuine break. The FBI sessions occurred in a former CIA black-site compound at Guantanamo, preserving what he called the “coercive psychological pressure” created during more than three years of CIA custody.

His ruling described at least 183 applications of waterboarding, forced nudity, prolonged standing sleep deprivation, rectal rehydration and a threat to kill Mohammed’s child.

The agents also did not give full Miranda warnings, tell him he could consult a lawyer or explain that statements previously coerced from him could not be used at trial.

The Legal Rule Is Clear, but its Boundary is Not

Under 10 U.S.C. § 948r, prosecutors cannot use statements obtained through torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

A later custodial statement, such as Mohammed’s FBI confession, may still be admitted if the judge finds it reliable, useful as evidence and voluntarily given.

That determination depends on the entire history of the interrogations, including the earlier abuse, the conditions surrounding the later questioning, the time between interviews, and whether the location and interrogators changed.

Changing the badge worn by an interrogator is not enough. While the change of agency and four-month time period are facts favorable to the government, the unchanged custodial environment, lack of counsel, incomplete Miranda warnings and many other factors favored suppression.

The question being asked was not whether the FBI agents themselves tortured him, but whether the CIA’s coercion made his statements involuntary. Schrama found prosecutors had not proved voluntariness by a preponderance of the evidence.

The government attempted to separate the 2007 confession from the earlier CIA interrogations by using a “clean team”—meaning FBI agents who had not participated in the abusive questioning.

This sort of change can help show that a detainee received a genuine opportunity to decide whether to cooperate, but it does not automatically make a confession voluntary. Federal law required Schrama to apply a “totality of the circumstances” test.

In plain terms, this means no single fact decides whether a confession was voluntary. The judge must weigh everything together, including the time between sessions, the change in interrogators, the location of the interviews and the continuing effects of Mohammed’s earlier treatment.

Schrama concluded that the new interrogators and four-month gap did not give Mohammed a genuinely free choice about whether to speak.

Other Terrorism Cases Pointed the Same Way

Mohammed’s ruling follows one involving his co-defendant and nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi.

In April 2025, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall suppressed al-Baluchi’s January 2007 FBI statements after finding that CIA torture and isolation had conditioned him to comply with interrogators.

The government appealed, and a three-judge Court of Military Commission Review panel heard arguments in February 2026. The appeals court has not yet issued a decision.

The same issue arose in the USS Cole case regarding a strikingly similar timeline. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri gave statements to FBI and NCIS agents roughly four months after his transfer from CIA prisons to Guantanamo, approximately the same interval between Mohammed’s transfer and FBI interviews.

In 2023, Army Col. Lanny Acosta excluded Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri’s statements to FBI and NCIS agents, even though those agents were said to have used conventional methods and treated him respectfully. Acosta concluded that years of CIA torture still tainted the later confession. A military appellate panel upheld the ruling in 2025.

Al-Nashiri is still awaiting trial for planning the October 2000 bombing that killed 17 U.S. sailors. Prosecutors still pursued Mohammed’s confession because courts evaluate voluntariness separately for each defendant, but the nearly identical timeline gave Schrama a closely related example.

The law’s concern with coercion extends beyond military commissions. The Fifth Amendment bars the federal government from using an involuntary confession produced by official coercion, and the Supreme Court has applied that protection to state prosecutions through the Fourteenth Amendment.

Separately, states individually recognize some form of duress defense to criminal charges, although the requirements and burden of proof vary. Contract law applies a related principle by making an agreement induced by duress generally voidable by the victim.

These doctrines serve different purposes, but each examines whether coercion displaced a meaningful choice.

What Happens Next

Chief prosecutor Rear Adm. Aaron Rugh said his office was reviewing the decision and would decide whether to appeal.

Federal law permits an interlocutory appeal, meaning prosecutors can challenge the ruling before the trial ends. Under 10 U.S.C. § 950d, the government may appeal an order excluding evidence that constitutes substantial proof of a material fact.

Prosecutors must file notice within five days and certify that the appeal is not intended to cause delay. Filing that notice automatically pauses the ruling and commission proceedings affected by it while the Court of Military Commission Review considers the appeal.

A prolonged appeal could threaten the June 2028 trial date, as the unresolved appeal involving Ammar al-Baluchi demonstrates.

The ruling does not dismiss any of Mohammed’s eight charges, including conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, hijacking and terrorism.

The charge sheet alleges that the conspiracy resulted in 2,976 deaths. Unless an appellate court reverses the ruling, prosecutors must try to prove those charges without Mohammed’s 2007 FBI statements, which they had described as their most important evidence.

Information obtained during coercive interrogations may assist intelligence gathering, but a Senate investigation found that the CIA’s methods sometimes produced faulty intelligence, and it cannot be used in court unless it satisfies the reliability and voluntariness requirements in 10 U.S.C. § 948r.