The alleged al-Qaeda mastermind who claims to have planned the September 11 attacks sat before a US military judge for the first time today.
Pakistani captive Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the highest-ranking al -Qaeda operative in US custody, sat at a table in the courtroom.
Mohammed and co-defendants Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi and Walid bin Attash are charged with committing terrorism and conspiring with al-Qaeda to murder civilians in the attacks that launched the Bush administration's global war on terrorism .
They also face 2,973 counts of murder, one for each person killed in 2001 when hijacked passenger planes hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
All five defendants came to court willingly and none were shackled inside the courtroom, a spokeswoman for the trials said. But it was unclear whether they would speak.
Before officially opening the proceedings, the judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, warned that he would cut the audio feed to the glass-walled spectators' section of the courtroom if necessary to prevent observers from hearing potentially secret information .
Mohammed told a military review panel last year that he approached Osama bin Laden with the proposal to hijack passenger planes and crash them into landmark U.S. buildings, then oversaw execution of the plan, according to US military transcripts.
The other defendants are accused of helping choose, train and fund the 19 hijackers, assisting their flight school enrollment and travel to the United States.
Prosecutors want to start the trial on September 15th, a date the defense says was chosen to influence the U.S. presidential election in November.
All five suspects, who could be executed if convicted, were transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006 after spending about three years in secret CIA prisons.
The CIA has acknowledged interrogating Mohammed using a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding and condemned as torture by human rights observers.
Defence lawyers have said they will challenge any attempt to introduce evidence tainted by abuse.