Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 2001 attacks on the US, moved closer to military trial on Tuesday when the Pentagon charged him and four alleged co­conspirators held at Guantánamo Bay.

More than six years after the 9/11 attacks, the five men, who face the death penalty if found guilty, will appear jointly before the ­military commissions that George W. Bush, US president, created to try detainees captured in the “war on ­terror”.