A military judge Tuesday said he would explore whether reputed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed bullied his alleged co-conspirators into firing their lawyers, and next week will question each of the men accused of plotting the 2001 terrorist attacks.

At issue was whether Mohammed, who has boasted he plotted the 9/11 attacks ''from A to Z,'' was a puppet master, a Svengali of sorts, at their June 5 arraignment at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, the judge, notified lawyers in a six-page order that he would hold the special hearings starting July 9.

One by one, the judge ruled, he would ''address the issue of what role, if any, perceived or actual, intimidation between the several accused [conspirators] played or is playing'' in their united stand to spurn Pentagon defense lawyers.

The June 5 arraignment was the first time the public saw the alleged al Qaeda architects of the jetliner hijackings that killed 2,987 people. It was also the first time they saw each other at Guantánamo.

All were secretly interrogated for years by the CIA. All rejected the legitimacy of the war court and all face execution, if convicted. Two said they welcomed death as Islamic martyrdom.

But Pentagon defense lawyers said during the hearing, and afterward, that they believed some of the accused were intimidated by the man known in CIA circles as KSM.

The Pentagon Office of Military Commissions refused to release or comment on Kohlmann's ruling, signed Tuesday. Lawyers who obtained copies explained it to reporters and read from it.

In other key items:

• The judge ordered a mental health examination of Ramzi bin al Shibh, a Yemeni accused of helping the 9/11 hijackers, to see if he is sane enough to stand trial.

Guards shackled bin al Shibh's ankles to the floor at his arraignment, where it was disclosed that the prison camp has him taking unidentified ''psychotropic drugs.'' In one exchange, he told the judge that he welcomed martyrdom -- and that he would've taken part in the 9/11 attacks but could not obtain a U.S. visa.

• The judge scheduled ''law and discovery motions'' for Sept. 25, a timetable that suggests a jury might not start hearing the case before the presidential elections. The Pentagon had sought a Sept. 15 trial date.

Pretrial hearings are crucial to deciding what law applies and what evidence the accused can see at the first U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War II. Later evidentiary motions are likely to tackle defense claims that government evidence was gleaned from ''torture,'' when CIA agents waterboarded Mohammed in secret overseas custody to extract al Qaeda secrets.

That was, in part, why Mohammed, 43, was the main attraction at the nine-hour hearing June 5. He appeared with a large white-speckled beard, a stern grandfatherly figure who recited Koranic verse.

Mohammed went first, rejected his counsel and one by one the men who sat as co-defendants behind him echoed him -- until late in the day when Army Maj. Jon Jackson protested what he called a climate of intimidation of his client, Mustafa Hawsawi, the 9/11 plot's alleged financier.

Mohammed allegedly told Hawsawi in Arabic, ''Don't talk to your lawyer, talk to me'' and ``What are you -- in the American Army now?''

''I don't speak Arabic,'' said Jackson, who said he got a translation. ``But my impression was he changed his mind based on what people were saying to him and about him.''

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