Relatives of British victims of the September 11 terror attacks welcomed news that prosecutors will push for the death penalty in the New York trials of five alleged plotters.

ATTORNEY General Eric Holder says self-proclaimed September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York for trial in a civilian federal court and he expects to seek the death penalty.

Self-proclaimed September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York for trial in a civilian US court and prosecutors expect to seek the death penalty, Attorney General Eric Holder said today.

Self-proclaimed September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said today.

The senior military judge overseeing terror trials at Guantanamo Bay dropped charges against a suspect in the 2000 USS Cole bombing, marking the last active war crimes case there, the Pentagon said today.

The US government today defended the use of the interrogation technique known as waterboarding, saying it is legal - not torture, as critics argue - and has saved American lives.

THE appeals trial of six men convicted in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole opened in the Yemeni capital San’a yesterday with prosecutors demanding the execution of two defendants who escaped the death penalty.

The appeals trial of six men convicted in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole opened in the Yemeni capital San’a today with prosecutors demanding the execution of two defendants who escaped the death penalty.

A YEMENI judge today sentenced two men to death for orchestrating the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole.

A Yemeni judge today sentenced two men, including one held in US custody, to death for orchestrating the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole.

A Yemeni security court today charged six Yemenis in the planning of the bombing of a US destroyer in October 2000 and said they belonged to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, opening the first trial in the Cole case.

US officials believe they have identified a young former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden as al-Qaida’s new chief of terror operations in the Gulf.

US authorities were yesterday interrogating the newly-captured chief of al-Qaida operations in the Persian Gulf.

Al-Qaida leader Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the network's chief of operations in the Gulf, has been captured according to senior US government officials.

OPENING up a visible new front in the war on terror, US forces launched a pinpoint missile strike in Yemen, killing a top al-Qaida operative in his car in the first such overt attack outside of Afghanistan, a US official said.