The US Attorney General, Mr John Ashcroft, has announced the first indictment of a key figure in the September 11th attacks: six conspiracy charges against Mr Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been held as a material witness.
Mr Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, faces the death penalty on four of the charges.
He will be tried in a federal court and not in a military tribunal as established by President George W. Bush.
Mr Ashcroft said a grand jury in Virginia returned the indictment against Mr Moussaoui on charges of "conspiring with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to murder thousands of innocent people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania on September 11th".
"Al-Qaeda will now meet the justice it abhors and the judgment it fears," Mr Ashcroft said.
He said bin Laden and other leaders of his organisation were cited as unindicted co-conspirators in the indictment.
The AG would not say where Mr Moussaoui was being held.
Specifically, the indictment carried charges of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, to commit aircraft piracy, to destroy aircraft, to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to murder US government employees and conspiracy to destroy US government property.
The charges said Mr Moussaoui trained in an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and received funds from sources in the Middle East and Germany.
He was initially arrested in Minnesota on August 16th for immigration violations after he aroused suspicion by trying to buy time on a jumbo jet flight simulator at a flying school.
After the attacks, Mr Moussaoui was arrested as a material witness and sent to New York for questioning.
The FBI director, Mr Robert Mueller, said: "In February 2001, Moussaoui arrived in the United States, opened a bank account with $32,000 in cash and immediately enrolled in a flight school."