U.S. to seek death penalty for 9/11 planner

MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. military prosecutors will filecharges on Monday against the alleged mastermind of theSeptember 11 attacks and five other Guantanamo prisoners andwill seek to execute them if they are convicted, officialsinvolved in the process said.

The charges against former al Qaeda operations chief KhalidSheikh Mohammed and five other captives will be announced in an11 a.m. EST (4 p.m. British time) news conference at thePentagon. They will be the first charges from the Guantanamowar court alleging direct involvement in the attacks and thefirst involving the death penalty.

Prosecutors will send the charges to a Pentagon appointeeoverseeing the Guantanamo trials, Susan Crawford, whoseapproval is needed before any trials can proceed.

Mohammed, a Pakistani national, has said he planned everyaspect of the September 11 attacks.

But his confession could be problematic if used as evidencebecause the CIA has admitted it subjected him to a simulateddrowning technique known as "water boarding" duringinterrogations.

The procedure is widely considered to be torture and theGuantanamo court rules prohibit the use of evidence obtainedthrough torture, as does an international treaty the UnitedStates has signed.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z,"the U.S. military quoted Mohammed as saying in anadministrative hearing at Guantanamo, according to thetranscript released by the Pentagon in March 2007.

"I was the operational director for Sheikh Usama (Osama)Bin Laden for the organizing, planning, follow-up, andexecution of the 9/11 operation."

The charges against him will include conspiring with alQaeda to attack and murder civilians and about 3,000 counts ofmurder for those killed on September 11.

Mohammed also said he was responsible for a 1993 attack onNew York's World Trade Center, the bombing of a nightclub inBali, Indonesia, and an attempt to down two American airplanesusing shoe bombs. He also confessed to the beheading of U.S.journalist Daniel Pearl.

Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003 and handedover to the United States. He is one of 15 "high-value" alQaeda prisoners previously held in CIA custody and later sentto Guantanamo, most of them in 2006.

The U.S. military began sending captives to Guantanamo inJanuary 2002 and hopes to eventually try 80 of the 275 whoremain.

The widely criticized Guantanamo tribunals are the firstU.S. war crimes tribunals since World War Two. They wereestablished after the September 11 attacks to try non-U.S.captives whom the Bush administration considers "enemycombatants" undeserving of legal protections granted tosoldiers and civilians.

They currently operate under authority of a law Congresspassed in 2006, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down thefirst version.

(Editing by Eric Beech)