US CHARGES SIX SUSPECTS OVER 9/11,
The Pentagon has announced charges against six Guantanamo Bay prisoners over their alleged involvement in the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US. Prosecutors will seek the death penalty for the six, who include alleged plot mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The charges, the first for Guantanamo inmates directly related to 9/11, are expected to be heard by a controversial military tribunal system.
About 3,000 people died in the hijacked plane attacks.
Brig Gen Thomas Hartmann, a legal adviser to the head of the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions, said the charges alleged a "long-term, highly sophisticated plan by al-Qaeda to attack the US".
The US has about 275 prisoners left in the detention centre.
He said there would be "no secret trials" and that they would be "as completely open as possible".
"Relatively little amounts of evidence will be classified," Gen Hartmann said.
The other five defendants are Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni, Walid bin Attash, also from Yemen, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, who was born in Balochistan, Pakistan, and raised in Kuwait, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, a Saudi, and Mohammed al-Qahtani.
Gen Hartmann said the charges included conspiracy, murder in violation of the laws of war, attacking civilians, destruction of property and terrorism.
All but Mr Qahtani and Mr Hawsawi are also charged with hijacking or hazarding an aircraft.
In listing more details of the charges against the defendants, Gen Hartmann alleged that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had proposed the attacks to al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in 1996, had obtained funding and overseen the operation and the training of hijackers in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti of Pakistani extraction, was said to have been al-Qaeda's third in command when he was captured in Pakistan in March 2003.
He has reportedly admitted to decapitating kidnapped US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 but these charges do not relate to that.
The charges will now be sent to Susan Crawford, the convening authority for the military commissions, to determine whether they will be referred to trial.
Any trials would be held by military tribunal under the terms of the Military Commissions Act, passed by the US Congress in 2006.
The Act set up tribunals to try terror suspects who were not US citizens.
The law is being challenged by two prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, who say they are being deprived of their rights to have their cases heard by a US civilian court.
After the release of hundreds of Guantanamo detainees without charge, about 275 prisoners remain in the detention centre in Cuba. The US says it plans to try about 80 of them.
Nineteen men hijacked four planes in the 9/11 attacks. Two planes hit the World Trade Center in New York, another the Pentagon in Washington and the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
The charges, the first for Guantanamo inmates directly related to 9/11, are expected to be heard by a controversial military tribunal system.
About 3,000 people died in the hijacked plane attacks.
Brig Gen Thomas Hartmann, a legal adviser to the head of the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions, said the charges alleged a "long-term, highly sophisticated plan by al-Qaeda to attack the US".
The US has about 275 prisoners left in the detention centre.
He said there would be "no secret trials" and that they would be "as completely open as possible".
"Relatively little amounts of evidence will be classified," Gen Hartmann said.
The other five defendants are Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni, Walid bin Attash, also from Yemen, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, who was born in Balochistan, Pakistan, and raised in Kuwait, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, a Saudi, and Mohammed al-Qahtani.
Gen Hartmann said the charges included conspiracy, murder in violation of the laws of war, attacking civilians, destruction of property and terrorism.
All but Mr Qahtani and Mr Hawsawi are also charged with hijacking or hazarding an aircraft.
In listing more details of the charges against the defendants, Gen Hartmann alleged that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had proposed the attacks to al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in 1996, had obtained funding and overseen the operation and the training of hijackers in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti of Pakistani extraction, was said to have been al-Qaeda's third in command when he was captured in Pakistan in March 2003.
He has reportedly admitted to decapitating kidnapped US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 but these charges do not relate to that.
The charges will now be sent to Susan Crawford, the convening authority for the military commissions, to determine whether they will be referred to trial.
Any trials would be held by military tribunal under the terms of the Military Commissions Act, passed by the US Congress in 2006.
The Act set up tribunals to try terror suspects who were not US citizens.
The law is being challenged by two prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, who say they are being deprived of their rights to have their cases heard by a US civilian court.
After the release of hundreds of Guantanamo detainees without charge, about 275 prisoners remain in the detention centre in Cuba. The US says it plans to try about 80 of them.
Nineteen men hijacked four planes in the 9/11 attacks. Two planes hit the World Trade Center in New York, another the Pentagon in Washington and the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.
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