BEIJING, Jan. 29 (Xinhuanet) -- A week of pretrial hearings have begun in the war crimes tribunal for the accused 9/11 mastermind and four alleged co-conspirators at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is accused of being the mastermind of the hijacked plane attacks that killed 2,976 people on September 11, 2001. He is being tried with four others accused of training and aiding the hijackers.

More than two dozen issues are on the docket for the week of hearings. Lawyers for the five defendants claim the men were tortured in secret CIA prisons and have asked a US military judge to order that the prisons be preserved as evidence.

They have also asked for the U.S. government to turn over all White House or Justice Department documents authorizing the CIA to move suspected al Qaeda captives across borders without judicial review, and to hold and interrogate them in secret prisons after the September 11 attacks. The accused have been in U.S. custody for a decade.

(Source: CNTV.cn)