'Constantly on my mind' - 9/11 agony goes on for bereaved, 25 years on

'Constantly on my mind' - 9/11 anguish continues for bereaved, 25 years later

The US government has called it the "most egregious criminal act on American soil in modern history".

Yet, 25 years on, the trial of the man accused of masterminding it has still not started, and the families of those who died worry that the chance for justice is slipping away.

Tom Resta’s brother John and John’s wife Sylvia, who was seven months pregnant, were among the nearly 3,000 people killed on 11 September 2001, when hijackers crashed planes into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Virginia. A third plane went down in a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought back.

In the days before 9/11, the couple had been getting their unborn baby’s nursery ready, painting it with characters from the children’s TV programme Blue’s Clues. They had long wanted a child and adored the children of friends and relatives.

On the day of the attacks, both traders were working on the 92nd floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center.

"After all this time, it still chokes me up," Resta told the BBC through tears. Although 25 years have passed, he said 9/11 was "almost constantly" on his mind.

Resta has travelled to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay four times to observe the complicated pre-trial hearings for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants, a process he calls "laborious and tedious".

A military prison was set up at the base in south-eastern Cuba during the "war on terror" that followed the 9/11 attacks, and Mohammed - often known as KSM - has now been held there for 20 years without ever being convicted.

Victims’ relatives are entered into a lottery to attend the hearings in a high-security courtroom, where thick glass separates them and the media from the defendants.

The pre-trial stage has dragged on so long that five different military judges have now overseen it.

Last month, as the 25th anniversary neared, there was a burst of activity and a partial breakthrough, with a trial date for Mohammed set for June 2028.

But Resta said he was preparing for more delays, and after so much time had passed, some of his relatives feared they would not live long enough to see the trial.

"My father will be 98 in November, and I don't think he's expecting to see it. I have a lot of family members - aunts, uncles - that would all like to see it happen. But my parents in particular, I don't think they expect to live long enough," he said.

"Hopefully all the defendants will still be alive by the time we get to trial. That's a big worry," he added.

Resta’s fears that the trial could be delayed again were echoed by relatives of other 9/11 victims.

Earlier this year, Stephan Gerhardt made his sixth journey to Guantanamo. He said it was important for him to see convictions for the death of his younger brother Ralph, but also something he wished he no longer had to dwell on.

"I want to concentrate on the memories," he said. "I still have Ralph's car. I'm trying to restore it and get it in pristine shape again… We were recently visiting my parents, and we found some of his things that they were holding onto, and the emotion behind it is like, 'yeah, this is just some old stuff, but it belonged to my little brother'."

Gerhardt said his "biggest concern" was seeing Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators convicted before they die.

"They're getting elderly… I don't want them to pass away without being convicted, because that would be an injustice to all the family members - that we captured these people, but we never got to try them and convict them for the mass murder that they did of our loved ones."

Mohammed has been charged with offences including conspiracy and murder, and the charge sheet lists 2,976 victims. He is accused of coming up with the idea of training pilots to fly commercial aircraft into buildings and taking that plan to Osama bin Laden, the leader of the militant Islamist group al-Qaeda.

He has previously said he planned the "9/11 operation from A to Z".

But days after the 2028 trial date was announced, the military judge rejected confessions Mohammed made to FBI agents at Guantanamo Bay after he was transferred there from secret CIA prisons known as "black sites", where he had been held for years. In his ruling, the judge described Mohammed’s treatment by the CIA as "extraordinary physical and mental abuse".

He said the confessions were not voluntary and could not be used against Mohammed at trial.

Experts say the torture of Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators has been the main cause of the case’s long delays.

"Every single issue has been litigated through the issue of torture," said Kasey McCall-Smith, an international law professor at Edinburgh University.

She said the defendants endured "years of abuse", including waterboarding and stress positions.

John Ryan, author of America's Trial: Torture and the 9/11 Case on Guantanamo Bay, said last month’s ruling means prosecutors lose what they had called their strongest evidence against Mohammed, though it is still unclear how much effect it will have on the case.

Ryan says the prosecution has other evidence, including intercepted phone calls and secret recordings, but it is not yet certain whether they can be used at trial. "Mohammad's team and the other defence teams will file motions to suppress some of these categories of evidence, as well."

During the George W Bush administration, the US acknowledged using "enhanced interrogation techniques" to obtain information from suspects, but said the methods saved lives and never amounted to torture. President Barack Obama banned them on his second day in office.

Victims’ relatives say the torture of the defendants has so far prevented their right to justice.

"If we would've not tortured them, the legal implications here would've been much, much simpler. They probably would've been sentenced to death a long time ago," said Gerhardt. "I can't control what the government did, and we've got to live with the impacts."

Gerhardt and Resta both went to Guantanamo in early 2025, when Mohammed and two of his co-defendants were due to plead guilty under a disputed deal with US government prosecutors that would have spared them a death penalty trial.

The BBC was with them at the base when the pleas were halted at the last minute after the US government argued that to "deprive the government and the American people of a public trial as to the respondents' guilt and the possibility of capital punishment" would cause "irreparable" harm.

Legal arguments over whether the deal is valid are still ongoing.

Some victims’ relatives saw the deal as the only workable path, while others said it was too soft and lacked transparency.

Resta said he had backed the deal to secure convictions.

"My philosophy is these guys are not the kind of people that should be out walking the streets, but as far as I'm concerned, they can just stay right where they are. I just want them convicted," he said.

Brett Eagleson, whose father Bruce was killed in the attacks, said he wanted a full trial rather than a plea deal.

"It's not so much that I'm taking an opinion on life or death for these prisoners, but I believe in the judicial system and I believe that the process works and I believe that a trial and discovery and sort of a public airing is the way to flush the truth out," he said.

Eagleson called the situation at Guantanamo "a mess" and said he had chosen not to attend any of the pre-trial hearings there.

"My overall feeling is a sense of betrayal from the US government and a sense of extreme frustration," he said. "They've botched every single part of this trial."

Now that 25 years have passed since the attacks, he said 9/11 remained a constant in his own life, but for the wider public it was "becoming a historical event".

"I think people just assume that we got Bin Laden, we're out of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan's over, and they just assume that chapter has ended."

When the trial eventually begins at the military court in Guantanamo, it is expected to last about a year.

Professor Kasey McCall-Smith said the purpose of the pre-trial hearings had been to decide "what evidence gets in and what evidence doesn't get in".

"If that is agreed in advance, the trial can be more expeditious," she explained.

As the victims’ relatives prepared for yet another anniversary marking the loss of their loved ones, Gerhardt said he was looking forward to the day the trial was finished and he no longer had to think about Guantanamo or travel there.

"It's a place I don't want to come back to. I want to live my life, enjoy my passions and my memories of Ralph," he said.