The accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks has a right to justify the worst terror attack on U.S. soil at his death-penalty trial, and that requires exchanging material about jihad with his defense team, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's lawyer told an Army judge Wednesday.

Veteran criminal defense attorney David Nevin invoked "recent history, ancient history" and "impressions throughout many areas of the world of Western oppression" in an argument to bring Guantanamo prison's legal-mail handling policy in line with what he cast as American Bar Association standards.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of plotting the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon returned to a military courtroom in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, today for pre-trial hearings that immediately became mired in a debate over how to handle secret evidence.

As a week of hearings began, defense lawyers said they weren’t willing to sign a memorandum of understanding on the handling of classified material because they said a judge’s order would prohibit them from sharing relevant evidence with their clients.

They dreamed of following in the firefighter footsteps of their fathers who died of 9/11-related illnesses. But then government bureaucrats declared their dads’ deaths weren’t heroic enough to be fully considered “in the line of duty.”

At least 13 men who banked on a longstanding FDNY policy granting children of firefighters who died on the job preferential status are devastated because their dreams have gone up in smoke.

The owners of the World Trade Center were blocked Thursday from filing a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the two airlines whose hijacked planes brought down the twin towers.

The ruling from Manhattan Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein came after a four-day trial where the doomed skyscrapers’ owners sought to sue for at least $3.5 billion in the 9/11 terrorist attack.