9/11 'mastermind' to be charged over attacks

The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be formally charged on Tuesday by a military tribunal at Guantanamo along with four alleged co-conspirators, the Pentagon said.All five suspects will be slapped with at least eight charges, including murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, hijacking aircraft, and terrorism, said a letter notifying 9/11 victims' families.

The Pentagon will announce Tuesday that charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged co-conspirators in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are being refiled to allow prosecution before a military tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base, a defense official confirmed.

The United States has decided to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed by a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay rather than in the United States, a US official said Monday.The move represents a major about-face for President Barack Obama's administration, which had initially planned to try the Kuwaiti-born Pakistani in a civilian court in New York, triggering public protests.

Lebanon's military prosecutor on Tuesday charged eight people with forming an armed gang in the eastern Bekaa valley and plotting attacks on the army, a judicial source said."Judge Saqr Saqr has charged eight people with forming an armed group in Majdal Anjar to stage terrorist attacks with the aim of killing soldiers," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.The suspects include Lebanese and Syrian citizens, the source said.Only two of the suspects are in custody. The rest were charged in absentia. If convicted, they could face the death penalty.

President Hosni Mubarak is to return to Egypt on Saturday, three weeks after undergoing surgery in Germany, the official news agency MENA reported."President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak is coming back to the country ... tomorrow afternoon, Saturday, from Heidelberg in Germany," it said.Top government officials and leaders of the armed forces and police would greet Mubarak on his return at the airport in Sharm el-Sheikh, the Red Sea resort where Egypt's veteran leader has a home, MENA said.

A Jordanian court will begin this month the trial of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard over a controversial caricature of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed, but it was unclear if he will attend.Zakarya Sheikh, spokesman for a group of local media outlets that sued Westergaard in 2008 for depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, said on Thursday the artist and others have been summoned by a magistrates' court in Amman to stand trial on April 25."A copy of the subpoena obtained by AFP says Westergaard "is accused of the crime of blasphemy."