The accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks in 2001 proposed the plot to Osama bin Laden and trained the hijackers to use short-bladed knives by killing sheep and camels.
Another accused plotter was with the al Qaeda leader bin Laden in Afghanistan when they learned airplanes had struck the World Trade Center in New York.
Al Qaeda members were instructed in ways to avoid detection, shaving their beards, dressing in Western attire, carrying no Islamic literature and using fake names and code words, such as "honey" to refer to explosives and weapons.
Those were among the details in an 80-page federal grand jury indictment in New York that laid out the case U.S. prosecutors had prepared to present at trial against five accused 9/11 plotters.
In the first criminal indictment arising from the September 11 attacks, prosecutors included information previously known from investigations by Congress and by a special commission.
The previously secret indictment, returned under seal in December of 2009, was made public on Monday, the same day it was dismissed after the Obama administration decided to put the defendants on trial instead at a military commission at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
"As the indictment unsealed today reveals, we were prepared to bring a powerful case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-conspirators," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told a news conference at the Justice Department.
HOW ATTACKS PLANNED, CARRIED OUT
The indictment recounted how the attacks from nearly a decade ago were planned and carried out.
Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind, in early 1999 in Afghanistan met with bin Laden in Afghanistan and planned the operation in which hijacked commercial airplanes would be flown into prominent U.S. buildings, according to the indictment.
It said he also trained the hijackers in 1999 and 2000 by killing sheep and camels, he instructed them on how to conceal the knives through airport security and how to obtain driver's licenses in the United States.
In late August 2001, Mohammed was told the date the attacks would be carried out and informed bin laden, according to the indictment.
Another defendant, Walid bin Attash, was with bin Laden when they heard of the attacks. Bin Laden instructed him to go to an area in Afghanistan and prepare by digging trenches and stockpiling food, weapons and ammunition.
A third defendant, Ramzi Binalshibh, managed the plot and sent money to the hijackers in the United States, according to the indictment.
Ali Abdul Aziz Ali also sent money to the hijackers from abroad while Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi helped the hijackers travel to the united States, according to the indictment.
It concluded by listing the names of 2,976 people who were described as murder victims from the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and from being aboard the fourth hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.