Murder and war crimes charges were brought by the U.S. government against six men suspected of taking part in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The trial of the six Guantanamo Bay detainees was announced on Monday and officials said they want all six to be tried together and that they will seek death penalty for every one of them. The evidence will be reviewed by a military judge, who will decide whether to recommend a continuation of the trial or the opposite.

The group of six detainees which includes the suspected mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, would be tried in the military tribunal system.

The other men facing charges are: Mohammed al-Qahtani, the man officials have labeled the 20th hijacker; Ramzi Binalshibh, said to have been the main intermediary between the hijackers and leaders of Al Qaeda; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, known as Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been identified as Mohammed's lieutenant for the 2001 operation; al-Baluchi's assistant, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi; and Waleed bin Attash, a detainee known as Khallad, who investigators say selected and trained some of the hijackers.

The charges brought against the six suspects include conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war and material support for terrorism, said Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, the legal adviser to the tribunal system.

Hartmann also said that the charges have been sworn "against six individuals alleged to be responsible for the planning and execution of the attacks" which occurred on Sept. 11, 2001 and killed nearly 3,000 people.

However, it will be a bit harder to prove Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s guilt and of the five other detainees' due to the fact that Mohammmed was subject to a cruel interrogation technique known as waterboarding. The Bush administration recently acknowledged that it used the waterboarding technique on Mohammed and two other detainees.

Waterboarding is a form of torture that mainly consists of immobilizing a person on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning in a controlled environment and is made to believe that death is imminent.

The Pentagon has been severely criticized at an international level over the past years for its detention facility at Guantanamo, where alleged terrorists have been held for years since the 2001 attacks, most without charge.