A few years ago, relatives of people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks began leaving messages at a monument in Guantánamo Bay near the courtroom built to put accused terrorists on trial. It was a way to remember a loved one in the enormity of the tragedy.
Inside a heart drawn on a stone, Deborah Garcia wrote a love note to her husband, David, and left it beneath the American flag at the site.
“Here to get you justice,” someone else wrote on a conch shell.
“Never forget 9/11,” another message said.
The words are now all gone.
With the approaching 25th anniversary of the attacks that changed the United States, a grim reality has overtaken the place of remembrance. The messages, written on shells, stones and chunks of coral, have been washed away by tropical rains and bleached white by the Caribbean sun.
Time and justice have not been kind to the families of the nearly 3,000 men, women and children who were killed on Sept. 11, 2001. The 19 hijackers died in the attack, and U.S. commandos hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. But none of the five prisoners charged in the plot have gone on trial.
A military judge recently set June 5, 2028, for the start of jury selection. But the death-penalty case at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo is in its 14th year, and with appellate questions mounting, there is no end of the effort to find justice in sight.
Ms. Garcia has been coming to Guantánamo since 2023 to watch the hearings and seek justice for her husband, a computer programmer from Long Island.
She said she went that first time “for my presence, my story and my husband’s life to be acknowledged. To not let them take my power.”
Hers has been a tragic road to Guantánamo, as recounted in her blog. Her husband died at 40, leaving her with two young sons. Their eldest son, Davin, died of suicide in 2020.
Still reeling from that loss, she became interested in a long-running lawsuit against the government of Saudi Arabia, the homeland of most of the hijackers, and the case at Guantánamo Bay. She has met with prosecutors and told her story to lawmakers in Washington.
Only one memorial remains at the Camp Justice signpost, as the place of pilgrimage is known: a sturdy, metal plaque for Ronald P. Bucca, a New York fire marshal who was killed when the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.
Mr. Bucca, 46, also was an Army reservist, and a U.S. detention site in Iraq — Camp Bucca — was named for him.
His memorial appeared as the others were fading away. Someone recently left a card there from the funeral of his mother, Astrid Marie Bucca. She died in April at the age of 98.
Since the first arraignment in the case in 2008, the office of the chief prosecutor has brought relatives of 173 of the victims to the base to watch the proceedings from behind soundproof glass at the rear of the courtroom. At least 19 of those visitors have since died, including fathers, mothers and grandparents.
Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama is the fifth judge to preside in this version of the case. He was an undergraduate English major at Georgetown University and a defensive end on the football team when hijackers slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, across the Potomac River from his campus.
Children with no meaningful memories of that day have come to observe the proceedings, which take place in a courtroom that was built specifically for the Sept. 11 case. It has been going so long that the Coast Guard emblems around the compound, a sign of that service’s contributions to security, have been replaced with the symbols of the U.S. Space Force, an entity that was created nearly two decades after the attacks.
Cindy McGinty came to Guantánamo just once, to watch a hearing in 2023, wondering what could constitute justice for the loss of her husband, Michael G. McGinty. The father of two and U.S. Naval Academy graduate was 42 when he was killed in the World Trade Center.
On her stone, she wrote: “Michael McGinty — Never forgotten.” She added “9/11” and drew a small dragonfly. Now, as the words at the memorial disappear, she fears that the horror of the attacks is also fading.
“My feelings are however very complicated,” she said. “I feel like the men in Guantánamo will never actually see a trial, and one of two things will happen — I will die, or they will and hence be declared innocent.”
The youngest of those charged is 47, and the oldest is in his early 60s. Their health has been declining from their time in C.I.A. detention and a lack of specialized medical care at Guantánamo to address their trauma and other disorders, their lawyers say.
During discussions of a plea deal in the case, prosecutors told family members that a trial followed by appeals could take years. In military justice, if a convicted prisoner dies while appealing, the conviction is vacated. He would die innocent in the eyes of the law. A conviction through a guilty plea could prevent that possibility.
Camp Justice can feel like a cruel, claustrophobic place for the families who travel to Guantánamo. A grief counselor accompanies them on their weeklong trips, starting with when they assemble at the distinguished visitors lounge at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington.
Soldiers on temporary deployment to the prison operation and other chaperones escort the family members around the base. The courtroom has a special blue privacy curtain that can be pulled closed to shield them from the eyes of other observers.
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