Five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be sent for prosecution to criminal court in New York from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an Obama administration official said.

The five were being prosecuted in US military commissions at Guantanamo, but the Obama administration has pledged to close the controversial prison and to move some of the cases to traditional US criminal courts for trial.

Still, some will be tried in military tribunals, including the accused mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen, Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, the administration official said, declining to be further identified.

US Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce the decisions later on Friday, the official said.

The move marks one of the first major steps by President Barack Obama's administration to close the prison, which he has pledged to do by Jan. 22, 2010. However, Obama and his team have faced numerous political and diplomatic hurdles and some officials privately admit it may be hard to meet the deadline.

There are 215 detainees at the detention camp which was set up in early 2002 by the George W. Bush administration to house terrorism suspects.

The trials in New York will likely provoke some strong reactions, particularly since it was the site of the 2001 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center's twin towers and killed nearly 3,000 people.

There has been resistance by some key US allies to take detainees from Guantanamo who have been cleared of connections to terrorism and some of Obama's political foes in the United States do not want the trials held on US soil.

Some Republicans argued that Guantanamo already has the facilities to try and imprison the terrorism suspects. They also have said the communities that would house the prisoners could become targets for attacks.

But the administration of Obama and his fellow Democrats have countered that the US courts and prisons have handled scores of terrorism suspects previously and they must close Guantanamo because it has tarnished the United States' reputation abroad.

The White House pressed Congress to overhaul the military commissions to address concerns raised by human rights groups. Lawmakers ultimately barred the use of confessions from harsh interrogations and made it tougher to use hearsay evidence.