9\11 detainees accept responsibility for attacks

NEW YORK: The five detainees at Guantanamo Bay charged with planning the 9/11 attacks have filed a document with the military commission at the US naval base accepting full responsibility for the killing of nearly 3,000 people, a media report said on Tuesday.

The document uses the Arabic term for a consultative assembly in describing the five men as the "9/11 Shura Council," and it says their actions were an offering to God, the New York Times reported today, citing excerpts of the document that were read to a reporter by a government official.

The document is titled "The Islamic Response to the Government's Nine Accusations," the military judge at the Guant��namo Bay detention camp said in a separate filing, obtained by The New York Times, that describes the detainees' document.

The document was filed on behalf of the five men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has described himself as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, the paper said.

President Obama halted the military proceedings at Guantanamo in the first days after his inauguration, and the five men's case is on hiatus until the government decides how it will proceed, the Times added.

Several of the men, the paper reported, have earlier said in military commission proceedings at Guant��namo that they planned the 2001 attacks and that they sought martyrdom.