CONDANNED

The United States will seek the death penalty against six Guantanamo Bay detainees who are suspects in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, an Air Force general said Monday.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one of six Guantanamo detainees to be charged, a general says.

The government will submit criminal charges against the detainees, who include alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Brig Gen. Thomas Hartmann said during a Pentagon news conference. The government hopes to try the men together, he said.
All six have been charged with conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, terrorism and material support of terrorism, said the general who is serving as legal adviser to the military commissions trying the detainees. Four of the suspects will also be charged with hijacking, he said.
The 169 charges allege a "long-term, highly sophisticated plan by al Qaeda to attack the United States of America," Hartmann said. Watch Hartmann outline the charges »
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"There will be no secret trials," Hartmann said. "We will make every effort to make everything open."
The exception will be when classified information is presented that could compromise national security, he said.
"I've been advised by the prosecutors that relatively little amounts of evidence will be classified, but it's still a possibility, and we have rules and procedures and rules of evidence in place to deal with that," Hartmann said.
All six suspects are accused of helping plan the September 11 attacks in which hijackers flew two jets into the World Trade Center in New York and another jet into the Pentagon in Washington. Another hijacked plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Bob Hughes, whose 30-year-old son died in the World Trade Center, said he was disappointed with the slow legal process, but he applauded the government's efforts to impose the death penalty on any conspirators.
"Anyone involved that helped these people get to America to do what they did, they definitely deserve the death penalty," he said.
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, 2,974 people were killed in the attacks, not including the 19 hijackers.
Charged along with Mohammed are:

Mohammed al-Qahtani, the so-called 20th hijacker in the 9/11 attacks;
Ramzi bin al-Shibh, accused of being an intermediary between the hijackers and al Qaeda leaders and finding flight schools for the hijackers;
Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, alleged to have sent approximately $127,000 to hijackers and arranging travel for nine of them;
Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, accused of providing the hijackers with money, clothes and credit cards;
Walid bin Attash, who is accused of training two of the 9/11 hijackers and assisting in the hijacking plan.
Mohammed, bin Attash, al-Shibh and Ali will be additionally charged with the offense of hijacking or hazarding an aircraft, Hartmann said.

THE RETURN OF TERROR

An Israeli woman has been killed in a suicide bombing in the southern town of Dimona, in the first such attack by Palestinian militants in over a year.
The attacker detonated an explosives belt at a shopping centre. Police shot dead an accomplice wounded in the blast before he could detonate his own belt.
It is unclear if the militants, from Gaza, reached Israel via Egypt.
Thousands of Gaza residents surged into Egypt last month when militants blew up the border wall.
The border was finally sealed by Egyptian forces on Sunday, but not before huge crowds of besieged Gazans crossed unchecked into Egypt where they stocked up on much-needed supplies.
Israel had warned that Gaza-based militants could take advantage of the chaos to infiltrate its territory across the long and porous desert border between Egypt's Sinai peninsula and the Negev Desert.
Meanwhile several people are reported to have been injured by gunfire following clashes between Egyptian guards and Palestinians at the Gaza-Egypt border.
The source of the gunfire is not clear but witnesses said youths were throwing stones at an Egyptian checkpoint before shooting broke out.
Hamas praise
Nine other people were wounded, one critically, in the blast in Dimona, a remote town that is home to Israel's top-secret nuclear reactor, but never before the target of a militant attack.
"It was like a war. People were running like crazy. I saw a piece of a human being right there, next to my leg," said witness Rosa Enberg.

Israel was hit by series of suicide bombings in the 1990s and 2000s, peaking after the Palestinian intifada or uprising broke out in 2000.
However, there were only two such attacks between April 2006 and now, the last being in January 2007 when a bomber blew himself up in a bakery in Eilat, killing three people.
Monday's blast is also the first since renewed efforts to come to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal were launched with US support last November.
Hours later, Israeli aircraft assassinated the top military commander of the Popular Resistance Committees, Amer Qarmut, alias Abu Said.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a meeting of his Kadima party that Israel was fighting a "relentless war... against anyone who tries to harm Israeli citizens".
Israel argues that restrictions it imposes on about four million Palestinians in Gaza and large parts of the occupied West Bank are crucial in preventing such attacks, though the blockades have been condemned as "collective punishment" by the UN.

ORDINARY LIFE

Two bombs in busy Baghdad animal markets have killed at least 64 people.
The blasts, at least one of which was detonated by a female suicide bomber, came within 20 minutes of each other.
Friday morning's death toll was the city's highest since violence fell in the wake of a US troop surge in the second half of 2007.
Correspondents say a fragile sense of normality in the capital had followed significant security improvements since the troop surge.
A ceasefire announced in August by the Mehdi Army militia of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, as well as the emergence of local Sunni militia armed by the US military that took on al-Qaeda in Iraq, have also contributed to the sense of security.

The first device was detonated by a female suicide bomber at around 1020 local time (0720GMT) in the popular Ghazil animal market, killing at least 46 people and injuring a further 80.
A popular spectacle for Baghdadis, the animal market only opens on Fridays and regularly draws large crowds, despite having been targeted by bombers twice in 2007.
Piled into wheelbarrows
Just 20 minutes after the first explosion, a second bomb tore through another crowded market in the Jadida area of east Baghdad, killing at least 18 people and injuring 30.

Police and medical officials piled the dead and injured into wheelbarrows, cars and the back of pick-up trucks to be transported to five hospitals across the city.
An official at the capital's Kindi hospital said at least 30 bodies had been received.
"We have a disaster here," he said. "There are too many bodies to count."