It once seemed that justice for the 9/11 plotters was close at hand.

“They will be brought to New York — to New York — to answer for their alleged crimes,” then-Attorney General Eric Holder said emphatically at a news conference in 2009.

What You Need To Know

  • Accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-conspirators have been detained at Guantanamo since 2006, but have yet to face trial

  • The case has been mired in years of delays since being transferred to a military commission in 2009

  • A plea agreement struck last year with three of the defendants was thrown out by a federal appeals court in July, further delaying the process

A planned trial in federal court in Lower Manhattan was scrapped following a public uproar, largely over safety and security concerns.

Instead, the case landed in a military court at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, where it has been mired in years of delays ever since.

“We’re not really making any progress right now at all,” Elizabeth Miller said. “The case is very much stalled.”

Miller, whose dad, firefighter Douglas Miller, died at the World Trade Center, is among those victims’ family members who have lost hope in the military court system.

“We’ve been doing this, as is, with the military commission system now for 13 years,” she said. “And we are still in pre-trials. We are not in a trial. We are not in a sentencing period.”

Miller, who is project director at September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, supported a plea agreement struck with alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants last year. In exchange for admitting to their roles in the attacks, they would have avoided the death penalty, angering some families.

Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rescinded the deal, and in July, a federal appeals court upheld that decision.

“We need to make sure that our government is pursuing the maximum penalty for these monsters,” Staten Island Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, who represents many 9/11 families, said.

Malliotakis cheered the court’s decision in July and is urging the newly appointed judge in the case to set a trial date as soon as possible.

“This was a terrorist attack of horrific proportions, the largest attack we’ve ever seen on U.S. soil, and if we do not pursue the ultimate penalty for these crimes, then I think that we have not done our job in delivering justice,” Malliotakis said.

But a trial could be many years away, given the complicated legal issues at play, like how to account for CIA torture.

Miller says a plea deal would have brought finality. Now she worries the defendants, who’ve been detained at Guantanamo since 2006, may never be convicted.

“If somebody like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were to die tomorrow, of course we know that he’s not an innocent man, but in the eyes of the law, the label is ‘presumed innocent,’” she said. “It’s not ‘not guilty,’ but he would have never been put down on court paper as being a guilty man.”