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'Architect' of 9/11 to go on trial on Monday

More than seven years after the 9/11 terror attacks shook the world, the alleged architect is to go on trial on Monday.

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WASHINGTON: More than seven years after the 9/11 terror attacks shook the world, the alleged architect is to go on trial on Monday.
 
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, once the number three in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network, is to appear before a US military tribunal at a Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, where he and four others have been accused of offences for the September 11, 2001 carnage, which entail death penalty.
 
The trial comes at a time when US President George W Bush, during whose tenure the twin towers came down in New York, has just over 40 days left in office.
 
In fact, "KSM" is one of three detainees the CIA admits to waterboarding, an "enhanced interrogation" technique that simulates drowning. Everything said in the court will be broadcast to the world on a 20-second delay so that classified material can be muted, the media reported.
 
"KSM", who is charged with 2,973 counts of murder, one for each person killed on September 11, is probably the most hated prisoner in US custody. The 9/11 Commission labelled him the "principal architect of the 9/11 attacks".
 
Born to Pakistani parents in Kuwait, he moved to the US as a teenager and earned a degree in mechanical engineering from a university in North Carolina.
 
After fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, he funded his nephew Ramzi Yousef's attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. He also planned the abortive Operation Bojinka -- a plot to explode a dozen airliners over the Pacific.
 
Captured in Pakistan in 2003 and sent to Guantanamo in 2006, "KSM" also confessed to personally beheading US scribe Daniel Pearl, according to the CIA.
 
But he has subsequently retracted his confessions, claiming that translators "put many words in my mouth" and accusing his captors of torture.
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