NEW YORK -- The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

Scott Fenstermaker, a lawyer for accused terrorist Ammar al Baluchi, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but ``would explain what happened and why they did it.''

The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Baluchi and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the nation's deadliest terrorist attack will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the World Trade Center site.

Baluchi, who is also known as Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. All five accused have been held at Guantánamo since September 2006 after years in CIA custody.

Mohammed, Baluchi and the others will explain ``their assessment of American foreign policy,'' Fenstermaker said.

``Their assessment is negative,'' he said.

Fenstermaker met with Baluchi last week at the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. He has not spoken with the others but said the men have discussed the trial among themselves.

Critics of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try the men in a New York City civilian courthouse have warned that the trial would provide the defendants with a propaganda platform.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said Sunday that while the men try to use a trial to express their views, ``we have full confidence in the ability of the courts and in particular the federal judge who may preside over the trial to ensure that the proceeding is conducted appropriately and with minimal disruption, as federal courts have done in the past.''