MAINZ, Germany -- More than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military is fighting a new battle in Europe.

Their enemies? Drug-runners, weapons smugglers and human traffickers.

The Joint Interagency Counter Trafficking Center (JICTC) is a task force based at U.S. European Command (EUCOM) in the picturesque rolling hills of southern Germany.

It helps U.S. government agencies and their international counterparts confront the criminal groups behind the illicit trade in narcotics, guns and people.

'Dismantle the drug flow'
U.S. and European officials say the drug business bankrolls many terrorist and criminal organizations. Last year, the Obama administration launched a new strategy to combat "transnational organized crime."

Europe is an attractive location for the narcotics trade. Experts say that cocaine sells for four to five times its U.S. street value and consumption has been on the rise in central Europe.

"This is not 'Miami Vice' in Europe," Brig. Gen. Mark Scraba, director of JICTC, told NBC News. "But our organization is being modeled off of the Joint Interagency Task Force South, out of Key West Florida, which has been in existence for about 25 years, with focus on South America, where they team with law enforcement officials to disrupt and dismantle the drug flow going into the United States.

"One of the big issues in Europe is that the volume of cocaine consumption has doubled between 2009 and 2011."

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A U.S. government fact sheet released last year highlighted that "29 of the 63 top drug trafficking organizations identified by the Department of Justice had links to terrorist organizations."

According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime's 2011 World Drug Report, the Taliban in Afghanistan made more than $150 million in 2009 through the sale of opium. That same year, the U.N. estimated that more than 80 tons of Afghan heroin reached Central and Western Europe, and about another 100 tons transited through Central Asia to Russia.

"Latest statistics show that the global opiate market was valued at $68 billion in 2009 and I have seen recent figures that are far above that," Scraba told NBC News. 

With its 40 staff members, including representatives from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, customs and border protection officials and the U.S. Treasury, the JICTC leverages existing military structures from the Patch Barracks in Stuttgart. JICTC was formally established in September.

"We sometimes compare ourselves to a small mom-and-pop shop, but in fact are a very efficient organization, as we have reach-back capabilities and capacities to those far larger U.S. organizations that have a similar focus," Scraba added.

The U.S. military has provided intelligence data, logistical support and non-lethal equipment for counter-trafficking operations for years -- but until recently their primary focuses had been Latin America and Afghanistan.

While actual raids -- as well as searches, seizures and arrests -- are mainly led and conducted by law enforcement agencies, the U.S. military's air and maritime surveillance capabilities help to monitor and detect suspected traffickers.

"I wouldn't say that it's a military role, what it is is a security role," Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, told NBC News. "It's a combination of military and police."

$250M cocaine seizure
Beyond offering traditional heavy military assets and providing intelligence, basic training measures for partner nations' forces have also had an impact.

In 2010, when EUCOM was in the early stages of its counter-trafficking efforts, a Ukrainian customs officer played a major role in the seizure of nearly 4400 pounds of cocaine. His involvement came only a month after returning from search-and-seizure training in the U.S.

Following intensive cooperation between Ukrainian border control and numerous U.S. agencies, several people were arrested off the coast of Odessa. Authorities confiscated cocaine with a total street value of an estimated $250 million.

"By confiscating product headed for the higher-yield European market, we also denied a large source of income for South American cocaine dealers that supply the U.S. market," EUCOM’s Capt. John Ross added.

Experts say that the economic crisis in Europe and the aftermath of Arab Spring revolutions are also fueling security concerns.

"As we see regimes in Northern Africa collapse and are confronted with other instable political environments, we can suspect that a significant portion of weapons, for example, will be seized by criminal groups," said Valentina Soria, a counter-terrorism and security expert from Britain's Royal United Services Institute.

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Officials say drug trafficking hot spots include Turkey and the Balkans, while weapons are often smuggled via the Baltic States and Northern Africa.

In October 2010, Moroccan officials dismantled a drug trafficking network that was linked to Colombian drug cartels and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). According to the Moroccan government, al-Qaida provided logistical support and transportation to dozens of cocaine traffickers in the network.

"We have seen this toxic brew in other regions in Africa," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said at a February conference dedicated to the fight against transnational crime, drug-trafficking and terrorism in West Africa and the Sahel zone. "As West Africa remains a transit point for drug traffickers between South America and Europe, the potential for instability will continue to grow." 

However, Scraba warmed the magnitude of the threat could potentially be higher.

"What keeps us up at night is a drug trafficker who has a very established drug route that was built over years and built on patronage of many in-between guys," Scraba said. "[What] if that criminal is then approached by an organization or a network that wants to traffic a weapon of mass destruction, but does not have an established route to get that weapon of mass destruction to its target? It could be downtown London, it could be downtown New York."

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An Afghan government minister, Obaidullah Obaid, survived a bomb attack on his motorcade in northern Afghanistan on Sunday, the second assault on a high-profile politician in two days, but two of his bodyguards were wounded, provincial officials said.

The Higher Education Minister was travelling from Baghlan to Kunduz province when one of the cars in his convoy hit a roadside bomb, Munshi Majid, the provincial governor of Baghlan who was in the same motorcade, told Reuters.

"The minister is safe," Munshi said. "Two policemen were wounded in the bomb attack," he said, adding that the bomb exploded on a highway outside Baghlan city.

Sunday's attack came a day after a suicide bomber blew himself up at a wedding reception in Samangan province, also in the north, killing a top Afghan official and 22 others.

On Friday, a car bomb killed a regional head of women's affairs in the east of the country.

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Insurgents have spread their reach from their traditional strongholds in southern and eastern areas of Afghanistan to northern parts of the country once considered relatively safe.

Homemade bombs are by far the most lethal weapons deployed by insurgents and remain the single biggest killer of civilians, as well as foreign and Afghan troops.

Violence in Afghanistan is at its fiercest since U.S.-led Afghan troops overthrew the Taliban government in 2001. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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KHOST, Afghanistan -- Three U.S. service members, their Afghan interpreter and 17 Afghan civilians were killed by an apparent suicide bomber on a motorbike in the eastern Afghan city of Khost Wednesday, officials said.

The United States Embassy in Afghanistan issued a statement saying it "strongly condemns this cowardly attack," which is the second on foreign forces in the troubled province this month. 

A U.S. official, speaking anonymously to The Associated Press, said the foreign troops killed were Americans.

However, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said the nationality of the troops would not immediately be confirmed.

A local official told NBC News that women and children were among the civilian casualties in the attack, aimed at an American-Afghan military convoy passing through the town.

The official said the death toll was likely to rise, and that 32 Afghans suffered injuries.

Msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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Russia is sending armed troops to Syria amid escalating violence there, United States military officials told NBC News Friday, in a move certain to frustrate Western efforts to put pressure on the regime of President Bashir Assad.

Moscow has sent a ship carrying a small contingent of combat forces to guard Russia’s deep-water port and military base at the Syrian city of Tartus, the US officials said.

The U.S. officials also said Russia has not sent additional attack helicopters to the Syrian government, but replacement parts for the Russian helicopters the Syrians are already flying.

It comes after the conflict was declared by France on Wednesday to be a full-blown civil war.

The head of the U.N. observers in Syria said Friday a recent spike in bloodshed is derailing the mission to monitor and defuse more than a year of violence and could prompt the unarmed force to pull out. 

"Violence over the past 10 days has been intensifying willingly by the both parties, with losses on both sides and significant risks to our observers," Maj. Gen. Robert Mood told reporters in Damascus. "The escalating violence is now limiting our ability to observe, verify, report as well as assist in local dialogue and stability projects." 

Tartus is one of Russia’s most strategically-important assets, giving it military access to the Mediterranean Sea.

Russia and China, both permanent members of the U.N. Security Council with veto power, frustrated attempts by key Western figures, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to enforce a United Nations peace plan brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday repeated Moscow's strong opposition to external interference in Syria, said it was not discussing plans for a Syrian political transformation following the exit of Assad.

PhotoBlog: Inside Syria

At a news conference after talks with his Iraqi counterpart, Lavrov said he had seen reports saying U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland had suggested Washington and Moscow were discussing a post-Assad strategy in Syria. 

"If that was really said then it's not true," Lavrov said. "Such discussions are not being held and cannot be held, because to decide for the Syrian people contradicts our position completely. 

"We do not get involved in overthrowing regimes - neither through approval of unilateral actions by the U.N. Security Council nor by participation in any political plots." 

Nuland was asked at a news conference on Thursday whether the United States and Russia were discussing a transition of power similar to that seen in Yemen last year, in which President Ali Abdullah Saleh was replaced by a deputy. 

"We are continuing to talk about a post-Assad transition strategy in that context," she said.

Lavrov said any broad international talks on Syria must include Iran and must only address ways to create conditions for a political dialogue in Syria - not the content of that dialogue or preconditions such as Assad's exit. 

Russia, which has come under increasing criticism from the West for arms deliveries to Syria, responded to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's allegations that attack helicopters were on the way from Russia to Syria. 

In a statement on the Foreign Ministry website, Russia said it had made no new deliveries of military helicopters to Syria but under old contracts it had repaired helicopters sent to Syria "many years ago". 

"There are no new deliveries of Russian military helicopters to Syria. All arms industry cooperation with Syria is limited to a transfer of defensive arms," the ministry said on its website. 

"As regards helicopters, planned repairs of (helicopters) delivered to Syria many years ago were conducted earlier," it said. It did not say when they had been repaired or, if they were repaired in Russia, when they were returned to Syria. 

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Syria's ambassador to Russia said on Thursday Russia had not sent new attack helicopters to Syria. 

Russia says it is fulfilling existing contracts for air defense systems against external attacks. President Vladimir Putin, due to meet U.S. President Barack Obama next week, said the weapons Russia sends could not be used in civil conflicts. 

A source close to Russia's arms exporting monopoly Rosoboronexport said Clinton's comments may have referred to helicopters sent to Russia in 2009 for repairs and which may be on the way back to Syria. 

The source said on Wednesday at least nine Mi-25 helicopters were sent to Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad to be repaired by Oboronservis, owned by the Defense Ministry. 

Russia delivered three different missile systems including Bastion anti-ship missile units and another anti-aircraft system to Syria last year. 

At least two ships carrying Russian weapons have reportedly travelled to Syria since the beginning of the year, though possibly not on behalf of state arms exporter Rosoboronexport. 

Reuters contributed to this report. Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News. 

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LONDON - Britain’s Government on Thursday confirmed plans to log details about every email, phone call or text message in the country to help anti-terror services track suspects.

Police and security agencies will also be able to access records of activity on social network sites, webmail, Internet-based phone calls and online gaming.

Britain’s Home Secretary, Theresa May, said the change – costing $2.7 billion public funds - was needed to keep up with how criminals were using new technology.

But many others, including lawmakers from May’s own Conservative Party such as David Davis, who described it as “incredibly intrusive”.

Under the proposed law, which has yet to be approved by parliament, telecoms companies would be obliged to gather a wealth of information on their customers and keep it for up to one year. 

Read more on the story at ITV News

Local councils would be barred from access to the data, but police, the security services, customs and tax officials would be able to use the information.

The Home Office said it would not need to read the body text of emails or eavesdrop on phone calls without a warrant.

The chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection told ITV News that he welcomed the government's new plans into tracking suspects through their use of emails and websites. Peter Davies said that data is needed "to protect the public" from serious offenders.

However, Nick Pickles, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said the proposals were "the very definition of Big Brother" and described the law as “dangerous”.

In an editorial article in Britain’s Murdoch-owned mass-market daily tabloid, The Sun, May defended her proposals as “sensible and limited," adding that worries that the Bill would stomp on free expression were "ridiculous" and dreamed up by "conspiracy theorists." 

The Home Office claimed the cost of the data-gathering would be covered by reductions in tax fraud and seizure of criminal assets.

ITV News is the UK partner of NBC News.

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KABUL - Eight civilians in one family, including six children, were killed in a NATO air strike after a field operation in Paktia province, local government officials told NBC News.

The incident took place at 8pm on Saturday in the Garda Serrai district, according the Paktia government spokesman Rohullah Samoon.

They were all members of one family, he said.

NATO said told NBC News it was taking the reports of the incident seriously and was investigating.

Samoon told Reuters said the air strike was not coordinated with Afghan security forces on the ground in the area.

Civilian casualties have been a major source of friction between President Hamid Karzai's government and U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan, Reuters reported.

NATO is preparing to hand over all security responsibilities to Afghan forces and most foreign combat troops are scheduled to leave the country by the end of 2014.

Khyber Shinwari, NBC News, contributed to this report.

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BRUSSELS - NATO air strikes killed 72 civilians in Libya last year, Human Rights Watch said on Monday, accusing the western alliance of failing to acknowledge the scope of collateral damage it caused during the campaign that helped oust Moammar Gadhafi.

In a report based on investigations at bombing sites during and after the conflict, the New York-based HRW said NATO strikes killed 20 women and 24 children. It called on the alliance to compensate civilian victims and investigate attacks that may have been unlawful.

"Attacks are allowed only on military targets, and serious questions remain in some incidents about what exactly NATO forces were striking," Fred Abrahams, special adviser at HRW, said in a statement.

The report claims to be the most extensive investigation to date of civilian casualties from NATO's air campaign and presents a higher death toll estimate than a March paper by Amnesty International which documented 55 civilian deaths, including 16 children and 14 women.

NATO considers its Libya operation highly successful, illustrating the allies' ability to work well together in a limited campaign. NATO carried out some 26,000 sorties including some 9,600 strike missions and destroyed about 5,900 targets before operations ended on October 31.

The alliance said the campaign had been conducted with "unprecedented care and precision and to a standard exceeding that required by international humanitarian law".

"NATO did everything possible to minimize risks to civilians, but in a complex military campaign, that risk can never be zero," said NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu in a statement.

"We deeply regret any instance of civilian casualties for which NATO may have been responsible."

NATO: Gadhafi using mosques, children's parks as shields

HRW acknowledged that NATO had taken care to minimize civilian casualties and added that countries such as Russia that had made claims of large-scale civilian deaths did so "to score political points".

But Abrahams, principal author of the report, said the care NATO took during the campaign was "undermined by its refusal to examine the dozens of civilian deaths."

Concerns about civilian deaths in Libya could hamper NATO's ability to carry out future operations outside the territory of its members, in North America and Europe.

Although Russia co-sponsored the U.N. resolution authorizing intervention in Libya, it later said NATO had "grossly violated" its mandate. This was a factor earlier this year when Russia opposed a U.N. resolution calling for action to stop the violence in Syria.

HRW highlighted an attack on the village of Majer, 160 km (100 miles) east of Tripoli on August 8, when NATO air strikes on two family compounds killed 34 civilians and wounded more than 30.

HRW said NATO had told it that the Majer compounds were a "staging base and military accommodation" for Gaddafi forces, but had not provided specific information to support that claim.

"During four visits to Majer, including one the day after the attack, the only possible evidence of a military presence found by Human Rights Watch was a single military-style shirt - common clothing for many Libyans - in the rubble of one of the three destroyed houses," it said.

NATO said it had now looked into each credible allegation of harm to civilians and confirmed that the targets struck "were legitimate military targets, selected in a manner consistent with the U.N. mandate". 

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courtesy Hawkins family

Former British Royal Marine Ed Hawkins was seriously injured in Afghanistan in 2010. He left hospital last year and is currently on a work placement.

LONDON -- Fisher House, the Maryland-based charity which provides overnight accommodation for families visiting hospitalized military members, is expanding onto foreign soil for the first time with a facility for British troops.

Construction has begun on a $6.8-million building with 18 en-suite rooms that will allow relatives to stay close to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where the U.K.'s most seriously wounded military personnel are treated.

As well as providing servicemen and women a place to relax away from hospital wards, it will have communal living space including a family room, play area, lounge and kitchen and a private garden.

Fisher House, which was founded during the first Gulf War in 1990, has more than 50 projects in the U.S., as well as others located on American bases in Germany. However, this is its first truly international venture.

'Unique American model'
Talk show host and former U.S. Marine Montel Williams and the charity’s chairman, Ken Fisher, attended a ground-breaking ceremony at the site.

Courtesy Fisher House

Montel Williams at the ground-breaking ceremony for the new Fisher House project at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, on April 23.

"This is a great honor for Fisher House, as we share with our British brothers and sisters our unique American model for caring for military families," Fisher said.

"This will be a sanctuary for the people who need it most: those who have made deep personal sacrifices – whether on the battlefield or on the home front – to keep us safe.  We thank them even though we know it will never be enough."

Almost 10,000 British troops are in combat alongside 90,000 U.S. personnel in Afghanistan. Figures from Britain's Ministry of Defence, collated by The Guardian newspaper, show 832 have been seriously wounded since Operation Enduring Freedom began in 2001.

Many families travel for hundreds of miles to be by their loved ones' bedside -- sometimes for weeks at a time, because of the need for months or even years of surgery and rehabilitation. Military accommodation exists for family members but only six bedrooms are available at Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Sue Hawkins, whose son Ed was almost killed by an improvised explosive device while on a patrol in Afghanistan in May 2010, said the new facility would "be a great source of comfort, particularly at a time when families are surrounded by so much uncertainty."

The blast killed his corporal and seriously wounded Ed, who was serving with the Royal Marines. He was flown back to Birmingham for several months of treatment.

"When we were told about Ed, we just left for the hospital," Sue Hawkins told msnbc.com. "We had no idea how long we would be there or even if he would survive. I can remember everything about that day, because of the shock, but that last thing you have time to think about it is planning where to stay."

Five-hour round trip
Faced with a daily five-hour round trip from their home in Hampshire, Sue and her husband Michael spent many nights across the road from the hospital in a former nurses' accommodation block, before moving to the military facility – a converted house in a residential street.

"There were times when Ed became very distressed and we were able to reach him quickly when the hospital called," she said. "That sort of comfort and care is very important. We know first-hand how important it is to have a 'home from home' in difficult, emotional and challenging times. Fisher House truly is a massive step in the best direction possible.”

Ed Hawkins, who is now 26, left hospital last year and is currently on a work placement.

British soldier Nick Gibbons, who lost a leg in a bomb in Afghanistan in 2008, also attended the ground-breaking ceremony on April 23. He told ITV News: "It's what you need really, your family around you. Facilities like this are great because it not only allows the family to stay here, it gives you a better relationship with your family. It's a stressful time. The last thing you want is them travelling."

Fisher House has contributed $2 million to the project, with the rest of the building cost provided by U.K. veterans' charity Help for Heroes, whose high-profile supporters include Prince Harry. It will be operated by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Charity and funded by Help for Heroes when it opens next year.

President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle have previously made a sizeable donation to Fisher House, which also operates a Hero Miles Program that uses donated frequent flyer miles to bring family members to the bedside of injured service members. 

Montel Williams told the Birmingham Mail that he was a regular visitor to Fisher House sites in the U.S., cooking meals for soldiers and their families. "I'll definitely be coming to Birmingham to do the same," he told the newspaper. "I'll bring my sister and my chef with me and we'll rustle up things like crab cakes and fish. It'll be real American-style cooking."

Msnbc.com's David Arnott contributed to this report.

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Updated at 11:57 a.m. ET: GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- The U.S. has finally started the prosecution of five Guantanamo Bay prisoners charged in the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, but the trial won't be starting anytime soon, and both sides said Sunday that the case could continue for years.

Defense lawyer James Connell said a tentative trial date of May 2013 is a "placeholder" until a true date can be set for the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the attacks, and his co-defendants.

"It's going to take time," said the chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, who said he expects to battle a barrage of defense motions before the case goes to trial.

"I am getting ready for hundreds of motions because we want them to shoot everything they can shoot at us," he said in the wake of Saturday's arraignment, which dragged on for 13 hours due to stalling tactics by the defendants.

"Everyone is frustrated by the delay," Martins said. He noted that the civilian trial of convicted Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui took four years, and he pleaded guilty in 2006 before being sentenced to life in prison.

Janet Hamlin / AP

In this photo of a sketch by courtroom artist Janet Hamlin and reviewed by the U.S. Department of Defense, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reads a document during his military hearing at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, Saturday.

On Saturday, Mohammed and his co-defendants refused to respond to the judge or use the court's translation system and demanded a lengthy reading of the charges. One of them got up and started praying.

Connell called the tactics "peaceful resistance to an unjust system."

The arraignment, Connell said, "demonstrates that this will be a long, hard-fought but peaceful struggle against secrecy, torture and the misguided institution of the military commissions."

The defendants' actions outraged relatives of the victims.

"They're engaging in jihad in a courtroom," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles, was the pilot of the plane that flew into the Pentagon. She watched the proceeding from Brooklyn on one of the closed-circuit video feeds around the United States.

A handful of those who lost family members in the attacks were selected by a lottery and flown to watch the proceedings at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, where Mohammed and his co-defendants put off their pleas until a later date.

They face 2,976 counts of murder and terrorism in the 2001 attacks that sent hijacked jetliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The charges carry the death penalty.

The detainees' lawyers spent hours questioning the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, about his qualifications to hear the case and suggested their clients were being mistreated at the hearing, in a strategy that could pave the way for future appeals. Mohammed was subjected to a strip search and "inflammatory and unnecessary" treatment before court, said his attorney, David Nevin.

Anonymous / AP

At left a March 1, 2003 photo obtained by the Associated Press shows Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind, shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan. At right, a photo downloaded from the Arabic language Internet site www.muslm.net and purporting to show a man identified by the Internet site as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sep. 11 attacks, is seen in detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It was the defendants' first appearance in more than three years after stalled efforts to try them for the terror attacks.

The Obama administration renewed plans to try the men at Guantanamo Bay after a bid to try the men in New York City blocks from the trade center site hit political opposition. Officials adopted new rules with Congress that forbade testimony obtained through torture or cruel treatment, and they now say that defendants could be tried as fairly here as in a civilian court.

Nevin said it would be impossible to present testimony against his client that wasn't corrupted by treatment that he says amounted torture. "It's not possible to untaint the evidence any more than it is to unring a bell."

Eddie Bracken of Staten Island, New York, was one of the victims' relatives allowed to attend the hearing, and said it was important to him to see the people accused of killing his sister, Lucy Fishman, a Brooklyn mother of two who worked in the World Trade Center.
He said he came away with impressed with the military justice system, with defense lawyers putting up an aggressive defense.

"If they had done this another country it would have been a different story," Bracken said Sunday. "But this is America."

Human rights groups and defense lawyers say the secrecy of Guantanamo and the military tribunals will make it impossible for the defense. They argued the U.S. kept the case out of civilian court to prevent disclosure of the treatment of prisoners like Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced in 2009 that Mohammed and his co-defendants would be tried blocks from the site of the destroyed trade center in downtown Manhattan, but the plan was shelved after New York officials cited huge costs to secure the neighborhood and family opposition to trying the suspects in the U.S.

Congress then blocked the transfer of any prisoners from Guantanamo to the U.S., forcing the Obama administration to refile the charges under a reformed military commission system.

Mohammed, a Pakistani citizen who grew up in Kuwait and attended college in Greensboro, North Carolina, has admitted to military authorities that he was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks "from A to Z," as well as about 30 other plots, and that he personally killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Mohammed was captured in 2003 in Pakistan.

Ramzi Binalshibh was allegedly chosen to be a hijacker but couldn't get a U.S. visa and ended up providing assistance such as finding flight schools. Walid bin Attash, also from Yemen, allegedly ran an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and researched flight simulators and timetables. Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi is a Saudi accused of helping the hijackers with money, Western clothing, traveler's checks and credit cards. Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, a Pakistani national and nephew of Mohammed, allegedly provided money to the hijackers.

During the failed first effort to prosecute the men at the base in Cuba, Mohammed mocked the tribunal and said he and his co-defendants would plead guilty and welcome execution. The lawyers' statements indicate that plan has changed.

NBC News' Michael Isikoff contributed to this story from The Associated Press.

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Paul Hackett / Reuters

Spectators find their seats at the official opening of the London Olympics stadium, inside the Olympic park, London, Saturday.

Britain has begun an inquiry into security at the London Olympics after a worker reportedly smuggled a fake bomb onto the site to expose flaws in its anti-terror defenses.

The worker carried the artificial bomb through two checkpoints without being searched by security staff, according to a British tabloid newspaper report.

Once inside, he was able to drive the package through the site, taking it past the velodrome before posing for a photograph with it outside the Olympic Stadium, The Sun reported.

The stunt, 24 hours before 40,000 people attended the official opening of the stadium on Saturday, was designed to show how vulnerable the site, which also includes the athletes' village, could be to a terrorist attack.

Fears that the international spectacle could be targeted by extremists have led organisers to spend $1.6 billion (£1 billion) on security for the games including 23,700 guards, 14,000 troops at key times and an 11-mile electric fence.

A spokesman for Britain’s Home Office told The Telegraph it had asked games organizers to "look into this incident and report back to the Home Secretary urgently".

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SEOUL, South Korea -- More than 250 flights in and out of South Korea have experienced GPS signal jamming since the weekend, with North Korea high on the list of suspects, officials said Wednesday.

Similar jamming in the past was traced to the reclusive North, which last month breached U.S. Security Council resolutions with a failed long-range rocket launch and was blamed for cyber attacks on South Korean financial institutions last year.

Slideshow: North Korea continues celebrations

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Pyongyang refuses to let failed rocket launch dampen tone of festivities.

Launch slideshow

None of the flights, including 11 operated by foreign airlines, was in danger, the Transport Ministry said, with automatic switching of navigation to alternative systems.

North Korea threatens to reduce South Korea's government 'to ashes'

"As it happened at the time of (military) drills in 2010 and 2011, we suspect North Korea was engaged in jamming signals," a government official said.

Lee Kyung-woo, of the Korea Communications Commission, told NBC News that backup electronic systems maintained safety and that it and other relevant government agencies would continue to monitor the situation. 

A Defense Ministry spokesman told NBC News that he could not confirm or mention what type of measures were to be taken against the North's suspected jamming.  

North Korea has stepped up its rhetoric against the South in recent weeks, hurling personal insults at South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and threatening to reduce the capital Seoul to ashes.

The North is expected to conduct a third nuclear test soon, possibly using a uranium device that would infuriate neighboring countries and the United States, which have been involved in talks to try to rein in its nuclear weapons program.

The North's ability to wage cyber war from North Korea is seen by the South, one of the world's most wired countries, as increasingly sophisticated.

News reports said North Korea operates vehicle-mounted jamming devices that can disrupt signals up to 60 miles away and is developing systems with further reach.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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