WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Five detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, say they want to confess to conspiracy charges for planning the September 11, 2001, attacks, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Monday.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- the confessed architect of the attacks, who was captured two years later in Pakistan -- and four other alleged co-conspirators asked a military judge if they could withdraw all pending motions and plead guilty, Maj. Gail Crawford said in an e-mail.

The defendants announced their decision in front of relatives of victims in the al Qaeda-orchestrated attacks, said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch. She attended Monday's hearing.

The commissions to try foreign terrorists have been delayed for years by legal challenges. In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled an earlier version of the commissions was unconstitutional, forcing the Bush administration and Congress to revise guidelines for the military tribunals at Guantanamo.

"What should have been a major victory in holding the 9/11 defendants accountable for terrible crimes has been tainted by torture and an unfair military commissions process," Daskal said.

"This is the government's last hurrah," she added, referring to the final weeks of the Bush administration's second term, which ends January 20.

In 2006, President Bush said he would like to close the prison but announced it needed to remain open to house what he called "cold-blooded killers."

The Pentagon's chief prosecutor resigned in protest in 2007 after declaring the military commissions had become "deeply politicized."

Critics say the camp has damaged the reputation of the United States overseas, with a U.N. report declaring that interrogation techniques used on prisoners "amounted to torture."

The White House has consistently denied that the United States practices torture, but CIA officials have admitted to using "waterboarding." The technique, which is said to simulate drowning, has been considered a war crime in the past.

The detention facility, which was intended to house foreign fighters captured on the battlefield, was created on the grounds of the naval base after the September 11, 2001, attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Questions

1. Is it fair/justifiable to attain victory "tainted by torture and unfair military commissions process?"

2. It has not been determined whether defendants will face potential death penalty, with what you have learned in the article, in your opinion, do they really deserve to be punished with death penalty?

3. Cite additional opinions, comments and further recommendations about the news article. Thank you very much.