June 5 (Bloomberg) -- Self-proclaimed al-Qaeda commander Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will make his first public appearance in U.S. custody today at a military-tribunal arraignment on charges he masterminded the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Mohammed, identified by the 9/11 Commission report as ``principal architect'' of the 2001 strikes that killed almost 3,000 people, is accused of murder along with four co-defendants. The charges carry a possible death penalty. He was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and held by the CIA until his 2006 transfer to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, site of today's proceeding.

Mohammed, in his early 40s, hasn't appeared publicly since his capture. During a March 10, 2007, Guantanamo hearing to declare him an enemy combatant, he bragged he was ``responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z,'' according to a Defense Department transcript. He claimed that in 2002 he personally beheaded Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Pakistan.

Today the charges will be presented and the five defendants will be asked to enter their pleas. The arraignments will help President George W. Bush's administration showcase military commissions for trying about 70 of the 270 detainees at Guantanamo. Sixty journalists were flown to Cuba on a military plane to cover the proceeding.

Five years of legal challenges have so far prevented any war-crimes cases from going to trial, and defense lawyers plan to continue contesting the fairness of the procedures.

No `Search for Justice'

The military commission is ``definitely not a search for justice on the merits of the case itself'' because investigators ``can interview a bunch of informants in the field and just come in and say what they heard,'' Navy Commander Suzanne Lachelier, who represents defendant Ramzi Binalshibh, 36, said in a telephone interview.

Air Force Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, who oversees the commissions, said the defendants will get prior notice of plans to introduce such ``hearsay'' evidence. Defense lawyers will have 30 days to challenge the evidence.

The five defendants are charged with conspiring to finance, train and direct the 19 hijackers who seized four airliners used in the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon outside Washington. They are charged in the deaths of 2,973 people killed in the attacks and the crash of one airliner in Pennsylvania.

Bin Laden

Mohammed is accused of proposing the operation to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 1996 and training hijackers to hide knives in carry-on bags before boarding the planes. Under Mohammed's direction, the hijackers learned how to slit the throats of passengers by practicing on sheep, goats and camels, the government claims.

He is accused of giving $100,000 to co-defendant Ali Abdul Azziz Ali to provide to the hijackers.

Binalshibh tried four times without success to enter the U.S. in 2000. The charging document says he wired $2,708 to one hijacker and in late August 2001 sent a message to Mohammed that the hijackers' leader, Mohammed Atta, had chosen Sept. 11 for the date of the attacks.

Justice Department and military officials have said they expect a host of legal challenges from defense lawyers on issues such as the admissibility of evidence obtained from Central Intelligence Agency interrogations, which human-rights advocates say included techniques amounting to torture.

Simulated Drowning

The spy agency acknowledged that Mohammed was one of three al-Qaeda operatives who underwent ``waterboarding,'' which simulates drowning. The CIA says it no longer uses the technique.

Justice Department officials said prosecutors are trying to limit use of information from CIA interrogations by compiling evidence from phone records, seized computer files and other sources.

``No evidence, no statement derived from torture will be admissible,'' Hartmann said in a telephone interview. Still, he said defense lawyers likely will raise challenges about ``whether something is or isn't a certain thing and whether it was or wasn't derived from a certain thing.''

The defense is seeking to disqualify Hartmann as the legal adviser overseeing the military court in the case.

Hamdan Case

Defense lawyers cite a military judge's decision to disqualify Hartmann from advising the commission in a separate case against Salim Hamdan, a former driver for bin Laden.

The military judge, Navy Captain Keith Allred, said on May 9 he was ``troubled'' by evidence that Hartmann told the chief prosecutor, Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, ``that certain types of cases would be tried'' based on whether they would ``capture the imagination'' of the public.

Davis resigned last October as chief prosecutor of the military commissions after accusing Hartmann and other Defense Department officials of political interference.

Hartmann denied the allegations, saying in an interview that ``there has been absolutely no political influence, zero.''

Lachelier, 41, a Navy reservist who has been a civilian defense lawyer in California, said she feels ``no conflict'' as a Navy officer defending an accused terrorist.

``I see the uniform as standing for broader principles, namely the Constitution and rights,'' she said. Those rights ``were won hundreds of years ago'' by soldiers and sailors, so ``it's almost a natural position to be fighting for those rights in the courtroom,'' she said.

To contact the reporter on this story: James Rowley at jarowley@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 5, 2008 00:00 EDT