Six charged over 9/11 attacks

Last Modified: 11 Feb 2008
By: Sarah Smith

Six Guantanamo detainees, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are charged with 169 offences in connection with 9/11.

They've been charged with central roles in the September 11 terror attacks and could face the death penalty if they're convicted.

It's the first time the special court at Guantanamo has brought charges directly linked to the 2001 attacks, which are now expected to be heard by a controversial military tribunal set up by President Bush.

According to US channel NBC nearly 200 of the nearly 3,000 victims died in the Pentagon.

From that same building six and half years later, the defence department announced that six men are to be charged directly with planning and executing that attack.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be charged with masterminding the whole of 9/11. The United States say he proposed the idea to Osama Bin Laden as long ago as 1996.

NBC added that he has in the past admitted to numerous terrorists crimes but only after those confessions came after he was subjected to simulated drowning by the CIA or waterboarding as it is called.

The CIA admitted last week they used this method of torture after five years.

Also being charged are Mohammed al-Qahtani, accused of being the 20th hijacker; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, said to have been the main intermediary between the hijackers and leaders of al-Qaida.

NBC sources say Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has been accused of being his right-hand man.

Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi is accused of being al-Aziz's assistant. Investigators believe, the other charged man, Walid bin Attash, selected and trained some of the hijackers.

The Pentagon is asking for the death penalty for all of these detainees and that means that if they are convicted they can appeal to a civilian court in Washington DC and all the way up to the supreme court.

And it is in these courts that the administration may start to have problems. If any of the evidence against them appears to have come from coercive interrogations - particularly if they use confession made after waterboarding - it would be thrown out by the courts.

The legal process at Guantanamo Bay has been subject to international criticism for its secrecy - many detainees don't even know what they are accused of.

But the Pentagon insists these trials will be as open as possible.

The trials will not be televised. Although they will be taped and some parts of the evidence will be down to families of 9/11 victims.

The military tribunals could take place at Guantanamo as early as May or June this year. So they could dominate the news all through the presidential election, reminding voters that their government thinks there is an ongoing terror threat to America.