WASHINGTON (AP):

The Defense Department has charged Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, and five other detainees at Guantanamo Bay with murder and war crimes, it was announced Monday. United States officials said they will seek the death penalty in what would be the first trials under the terrorism-era military tribunal system.

''These charges allege a long term, highly sophisticated, organised plan by al-Qaida to attack the United States of America,'' Brig Gen Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser to the tribunal system, told reporters.