A trial date has been set for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged architect of the 9\/11 attacks on the US.<\/p>\n
Mr Mohammad will be tried, along with four other men, at a military court in Guant\u00e1namo Bay from 11 January 2021.<\/p>\n
The men are charged with war crimes including terrorism and the murder of almost 3,000 people.<\/p>\n
The five men will be the first to go on trial, nearly 20 years since the devastating attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
If found guilty, the group all face the death penalty.<\/p>\n
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured in Pakistan in 2003, and transferred to America’s Guant\u00e1namo base in Cuba where he was later charged.<\/p>\n
But attempts to prosecute him and the rest of the group have been mired in delays.<\/p>\n
During an earlier attempt to try him before a military tribunal in 2008, he said he intended to plead guilty and would welcome martyrdom.<\/p>\n
In 2009 the Obama administration, which had pledged to close Guant\u00e1namo, tried to move the trial to New York but reversed its decision in 2011 after opposition from Congress.<\/p>\n
The five men were eventually charged in June 2011 with offences similar to those they were accused of by George W Bush’s administration.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon has previously said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed admitted he was responsible “from A to Z” for the 9\/11 attacks.<\/p>\n
US prosecutors allege that he was involved with a host of other terrorist activities.<\/p>\n
These include the 2002 nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia; the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl; and a failed 2001 attempt to blow up an airliner using a shoe bomb.<\/p>\n
Hearings for the forthcoming trial are planned for next month.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for the group are trying to bar the use of confessions the defendants made to the FBI in 2006.<\/p>\n
They argue that the confessions are unusable in court because of the harsh interrogations carried out during their detention.<\/p>\n
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has alleged that he has been repeatedly tortured during his detention in Cuba.<\/p>\n
CIA documents confirm that he was subjected to simulated drowning, known as waterboarding, 183 times.<\/p>\n
The four other men – Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ammar al-Baluchi and Mustafa al-Hawsawi – were also interrogated by the CIA in a network of overseas prisons, known as “black sites,” before they were passed on to the US military.<\/p>\n
Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"