Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said he will confess to masterminding the Sept 11 attacks, throwing his death-penalty trial into disarray and shocking victims' relatives who watched from behind a glass partition.

Four other men also abandoned their defences, in effect daring the Pentagon to grant their wish for martyrdom. The judge ordered lawyers to advise him by Jan. 4 whether the Pentagon can apply the death penalty - which military prosecutors are seeking - without a jury trial.

"When they admitted their guilt, my reaction was, 'Yes!' My inclination was to jump up and say 'Yay!' But I managed to maintain my decorum," said Maureen Santora, of Long Island City, New York, whose firefighter son Christopher died responding to the World Trade Center attacks.

Santora was one of nine victims' relatives watching the proceedings, the first time relatives of the 2,975 people killed in the attacks have been allowed to observe the war-crimes trials. She watched from the back of the courtroom, wearing black and clutching a photo of her son in uniform.

Alice Hoagland of Redwood Estates, California, whose son Mark Bingham was on United Flight 93 whose passengers fought hijackers before it crashed in rural Pennsylvania, said the defendants should not be executed and become martyrs.

"They do not deserve the glory of executions," Hoagland said. "I want these dreadful people to live out their lives in a U.S. prison .... under the control of people they profess to hate."

In an about-face that appeared to take the court by complete surprise, the five men announced they were abandoning their attempts to mount a vigorous defense and instead requested "an immediate hearing session to announce our confessions."

... contd.