September 16, 2013: The trial of five men alleged of aiding the September 11 attacks re-opens at GTMO. Officially known as United States v. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, this military commission has proceeded spasmodically since charges were first announced in 2008. The defendants could eventually face the death penalty.

September 11, 2001: The world watches, stunned, as hijacked aircraft crash into the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia. A fourth plane crash lands in Pennsylvania. The destruction is immense: it will take months to clear the rubble left by the attacks, and years and decades longer to begin to heal the wounds suffered that day.