The US military will televise the Guantanamo trial of accused September 11th mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other suspects so relatives of those killed in the attacks can watch on the US mainland.
"We're going to broadcast in real time to several locations that will be available just to victim families," Army Col. Lawrence Morris, chief prosecutor for the controversial war crimes court, said at the naval base recently.
In February, military prosecutors charged Mohammed and five other captives with murder and conspiracy and asked that they be executed if convicted of plotting to crash hijacked planes into New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in 2001.
No trial date has been set but they are the first Guantanamo prisoners charged with direct involvement in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Col Morris said several of the victims' relatives asked to watch the trials at the detention Centre set up in Guantanamo Bay naval base to try foreign terrorism suspects.
The base sits on a dusty patch of the island of Cuba and does not have many flights, beds or courtroom seats to accommodate spectators.
The trials will be beamed to closed-circuit television viewing sites on military bases at Fort Hamilton in New York, Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, Fort Meade in Maryland and Fort Devens in Massachusetts,Col Morris said.
The military is borrowing a page from the civilian court sentencing hearing of Zacarias Moussaoui, a flight school student who is the only person convicted in the United States in connection with the September 11th plot. He pleaded guilty to conspiring with al Qaeda and was sentenced to life in prison.