You Vote: As 25th anniversary of 9/11 nears, judge bars KSM's confession from his trial. What now?

A military judge ruled Friday that a confession pertaining to the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001 is inadmissible in an upcoming trial because it was tainted by the suspect being tortured through waterboarding. The ruling came just days after the judge scheduled alleged mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's trial and the trial of three other alleged co-conspirators for June 2028.

The judge, Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, ruled that KSM's confessions to the FBI were not made voluntarily, and that subsequent interrogations in 2007 at Guantánamo were also inadmissible.

The judge cited several factors in his ruling, including an “unbroken continuation of the C.I.A.’s psychological conditioning and severe coercion” at the time of the questioning in 2007 and that the FBI intentionally failed to tell Mohammed that he had a right to be silent and to consult a lawyer, and that what he confessed could be used against him at a trial.

Mohammed allegedly confessed to planning the 9/11 attacks in a March 2007 statement to the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, saying, “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z. I was the operational director for Sheikh Osama bin Laden for the organizing, planning, follow-up, and execution of the 9/11 operation.”