The alleged mastermind behind the 11 September attacks and four co-defendants have sent a note to a military judge at Guantanamo saying they wanted to plead guilty.
The judge said he would question the five, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected planner of the 11 September attacks, to ensure that was their wish.
'We all five have reached an agreement to request from the commission an immediate hearing session in order to announce our confessions... with our earnest desire in this regard without being under any kind of pressure, threat, intimidations or promise from any party', said judge Steven Henley, reading from the defendants' note.
The note said all five wished to plead guilty and withdraw any pending motions filed by their military-appointed lawyers, whom they do not trust and have tried to fire.
The surprise move by the five defendants came as the US military resumed pretrial hearings at the Guantanamo naval base, in a remote US-controlled corner of Cuba, for the accused plotters of the terror attacks.
The hearings went forward as scheduled, even though the pending change in the US administration made it unlikely defendants' trials would ever be held at the base.
US President-elect Barack Obama. who takes office on 20 January, has said he will shut down the widely condemned Guantanamo prison camp and try detainees in the regular US civilian or military courts rather than the special Guantanamo tribunals created by the Bush administration.
