The Pentagon yesterday demanded the death penalty for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed September 11 mastermind, and five other Guantanamo Bay inmates, after charging them with murder and conspiracy for key roles in the attacks in 2001.

Military prosecutors handed over their files to the Pentagon judge overseeing the specially convened war court set up in Guantanamo Bay to try terror suspects caught in the so-called global War on Terror.

The trial, on a series of charges ranging from murder and violating the rules of law to terrorism, will be the first to address charges arising directly from the terror attacks, the worst on American soil. “The defendants will face the possibility of being sentenced to death,” Brigadier-General Thomas Hartmann, a Pentagon legal adviser, said.

The capital charges promise to refocus international attention on the rights and wrongs of American justice after the attacks, from the establishment of the jail at Guantanamo Bay to the controversial military justice system set up to try its inmates.

Much of the evidence used to draw up the charges was obtained during interrogations using coercive methods whose legality remains in question.

In testimony given while in Guantanamo Bay Mr Mohammed has confessed to conceiving and planning every aspect of the scheme to hijack and crash airliners into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

As the CIA admitted publicly for the first time last week, however, some of his confessions were extracted during sessions when he was subjected to “waterboarding”, a drowning simulation technique regarded widely as torture. Brigadier-General Hartmann admitted that the first court battles are likely to focus on the admissibility of such confessions, as well as the legality of the tribunal itself. The tribunal rules have been extensively rewritten since the Supreme Court ruled that they breached the Geneva Convention and demanded more rights for defendants.

Another decision is due from its justices before the end of June on what rights Guantanamo Bay prisoners are due, including whether they are protected under the US Constitution.

Mr Mohammed and his five codefendants are among a handful of high-value suspected al-Qaeda prisoners who were held in secret CIA prisons overseas until 2006, when they were taken to Guantanamo Bay.

The other suspects include alleged intermediaries in the plot, among them the man known as the “20th hijacker” who was thwarted from piloting one of the hijacked planes when he was denied entry to the United States only weeks before the attacks.

Mr Mohammed is said to have dreamt up the idea of flying fuel-laden planes into American buildings and took it to Osama bin Laden for approval. “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z,” said Mr Mohammed, according to a transcript from a March hearing in Guantanamo Bay.

According to the same transcripts, he also confessed to the 1993 World Trade Centre attacks and the thwarted attempt by Richard Reid, the so-called British shoe-bomber, to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic. He also confessed to personally beheading Daniel Pearl, the American reporter.

The admissibility of the confessions would come down to “the prosecution and the defence fighting it out in front of a military judge”, Brigadier-General Hartmann said. He emphasised the rights afforded the defendants, including the rights to silence without inference, to see evidence against them and to call and cross-examine witnesses. They will be provided court-appointed military lawyers but no civilians ones unless at their own expense.

After the Supreme Court’s intervention, the defendants also have an automatic right of appeal, which could go all the way up to the Supreme Court itself. “Just so you know, at Nuremberg there was no right of appeal,” Brigadier-General Hartmann said.

America is likely to face a storm of criticism over the capital charges from allies opposed to the death penalty, among them countries whose own citizens are incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. America is alone in Nato in putting convicted criminals to death.

The Guantanamo Six

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the self- confessed mastermind and planner of 9/11. Admitted other attacks including the failed shoebomber plot and beheading the US journalist Daniel Pearl, although not currently charged with those crimes

Ali Abd Al-Aziz Ali Mr Mohammed’s nephew. Alleged to have arranged finances and travel for the hijackers to the US

Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi Mr Ali’s alleged assistant in financial planning for the attacks

Ramzi Binalshibh the alleged intermediary between the 9/11 footsoldiers and al-Qaeda leaders; arranged flight training in the US

Waleed bin Attash alleged to have assisted Osama bin Laden to pick the hijackers, and supervised their training in Afghanistan

Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged “20th hijacker” whose participation in the attacks was allegedly thwarted when he was refused entry to the USA in August 2001

Source: Times archives

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