Alleged 9/11 Mastermind Confesses to Attacks

Khalid Sheik Mohammed Claims He Decapitated Reporter Daniel Pearl

Taken from Washington Post, Thursday, March 15, 2007
By Josh White

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, confessed at a Guantanamo Bay military hearing that he planned and funded that al-Qaeda operation and said he was involved in more than two dozen other terrorist acts around the world, according to documents released by the Pentagon yesterday.

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Transcripts
Transcripts of Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearings

at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed (March 10, 2007)
Abu Faraj al-Libi (March 9, 2007)
Ramzi Binalshibh (March 9, 2007)

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Among Mohammed's claims: That he personally decapitated Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in 2002. Citing records released by the Pentagon on Thursday, wire services quoted Mohammed as telling investigators that he "decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl," but that the incident was not part of an al-Qaeda operation.

The claims about Pearl were withheld from the initial Pentagon release until his family was notified, wire services reported.

In a rambling statement delivered Saturday to a closed-door military tribunal, Mohammed declared himself an enemy of the United States and claimed some responsibility for many of the major terrorist attacks on U.S. and allied targets over more than a decade. He said that he is at war with the United States and that the deaths of innocent people are an unfortunate consequence of that conflict.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z," Mohammed told a panel of military officers through a personal representative, who read off a list of 31 terrorist acts that were either carried out or planned but not executed. According to transcripts released by Defense Department officials last night, Mohammed later spoke in broken English and Arabic, saying, "For sure, I'm American enemies."

Mohammed took responsibility for the attacks on New York and Washington in an interrogation detailed in the Sept. 11 commission's report. But his appearance before the tribunal at Guantanamo Bay marked the first time since his March 2003 arrest that he was allowed to make an extended statement that was not delivered to interrogators.

His capture was followed by years of detention in secret CIA facilities, where he was held without any contact with the outside world.

The Pentagon released the transcript last night along with similar records from two other hearings for alleged terrorists. They were among a group of 14 high-value detainees transferred to Guantanamo Bay from CIA custody last September on orders from President Bush. Each detainee is entitled to such a review to determine whether he is an enemy combatant and whether he should remain in U.S. custody. The hearings may be a prelude to possible charges and, ultimately, military trials.

Mohammed presented evidence, in the form of a written statement, in which he appears to allege abuse. The tribunal president told Mohammed he had received the statement "regarding certain treatment that you claim to have received" before arriving at Guantanamo Bay.

The tribunal president also asked whether any statements he made under interrogation were "as the result of any of the treatment." Mohammed answered: "CIA peoples. Yes. At the beginning when they transferred me . . ." The rest of the sentence is redacted from the transcript.

The other hearings were for Abu Faraj al-Libi, who did not appear at his hearing, and Ramzi Binalshibh, who allegedly played a direct role in the Sept. 11 attacks. He also did not participate in the hearing.

Mohammed described himself as Osama bin Laden's operational director for the Sept. 11 attacks and as al-Qaeda's military operational commander for "all foreign operations around the world."

He claimed to have been "responsible" for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Richard Reid's attempt to ignite a shoe bomb on an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean in December 2001, and the October 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia.

Mohammed also said he plotted to assassinate several former presidents, including Jimmy Carter, a scheme not previously revealed.

Mohammed described several other plots that never came about, such as attacks on buildings in California, Chicago and Washington state, and on the New York Stock Exchange.

Despite his statements, it is unclear how much involvement he could have had in the 31 separate attacks he listed. The Sept. 11 commission described Mohammed as a flamboyant operative who developed grandiose plans for attacks even as other al-Qaeda leaders urged him to focus on the Sept. 11 plot.

One of those plans revealed Mohammed as captivated by "a spectacle of destruction with KSM as the self-cast star -- the superterrorist," the commission wrote.

Mohammed contended that he and al-Qaeda are not terrorists, but are in engaged in a long struggle against U.S. oppression in the Middle East. He apologizes for killing children in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Because war, for sure, there will be victims," he said. "When I said I'm not happy that 3,000 been killed in America. I feel sorry even. I don't like to kill children and the kids."

Mohammed likened al-Qaeda's quest to Colonial America's struggles in the of America's Revolutionary War, drawing parallels between Laden and George Washington.

"So when we made any war against America, we are jackals fighting in the nights," he said, adding later that had Washington been arrested by the British, he, too, would have been considered an enemy combatant.

"As consider George Washington as hero, Muslims many of them are considering Osama bin Laden. He is doing same thing. He is just fighting. He needs his independence."

Mohammed said he wants to make a "great awakening" to force the United States to stop foreign policy "in our land."

He urged the U.S. military to release numerous detainees who were captured in Afghanistan and are now at Guantanamo, saying that many were wrongly swept up. At one point, he contended that a group of men sent to assassinate bin Laden and captured by al-Qaeda were later taken prisoner by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University, said Mohammed sees himself as a "reluctant warrior and justified" in his actions, as many other terrorists have characterized themselves.

Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

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So after 4 years in military custody, with daily interrogation, Mohammed admits to a long list of terrorist projects that he was directly or indirectly involved in. I’m just surprised he wasn’t responsible for killing of John F. Kennedy, John Lennon or shooting JR Ewing. The worrying thing is that the cruel methods US interrogators have used since September 11 to "break" prisoners are finally being put on trial with the case of José Padilla recently. There is no need to go so far back to prove that the US military knew full well that it was driving Padilla mad. The army's field manual, reissued just last year, states: "Sensory deprivation may result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and antisocial behavior" - as well as "significant psychological distress" If these techniques drove Padilla insane, that means the US government has been deliberately driving hundreds, possibly thousands, of prisoners insane around the world. What makes a mockery of the trials are that the defendants are not entitled to normal rights of legal representation, and the hearings are closed to public scrutiny. In the Defense Department transcript, Mohammed said his statement was not made under duress. But Mohammed and human rights advocates have alleged that he was tortured, and legal experts say that could taint all his statements. According to the document, the military colonel heading the panel hearing his case asked Mr Mohammed: "Is any statement that you made, was it because of this treatment, to use your word, you claim torture. Do you make any statements because of that?" Portions of Mr Mohammed's response have been deleted from the transcript and his immediate answer is unclear. He later told the hearing that his confession to the list of attacks was given without any pressure, threats or duress. The colonel said Mr Mohammed's torture allegations would be "reported for any investigation that may be appropriate" and would be taken into account when considering his "enemy combatant" status. He is understood to have gone through torture, including "waterboarding" when the suspect being interrogated is strapped to a board and placed underwater. According to the New York Times, the use of harsh techniques was approved in his case by the justice department and the CIA. A separate transcript of another top al-Qaida suspect, Abi Faraj al-Libi, also released last night, contains a statement from him in which he refuses to cooperate with the proceedings. "I have been held by the United States for over two years without any indication of how the judicial system is going to deal with my situation. It is my opinion the detainee is in a lose-lose situation," the transcript reads.

The following text has been taken from the Independent, UK, 16.03.06)

The extravagant confession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief organiser of the September 2001 attacks against the US, should be treated with a pinch of salt.

First, it is unclear to what extent it was influenced by the torture (or in Dick Cheney-speak "harsh interrogation") to which he was subjected by the CIA after his capture in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003.

Second, as the independent 9/11 Commission report noted almost three years ago, Mohammed saw himself as "a self-cast star, the super-terrorist" of al-Qa'ida.

His lead role in the September 11 attacks is beyond dispute and, according to an additional transcript released yesterday by the Pentagon, he boasts of personally beheading "with my blessed right hand" the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. But it seems unlikely that Mohammed was directly involved in all of the 31 terrorist plots - some carried out, others merely intended, and several never made public until now - for which he has claimed responsibility.

Third, he is a man with nothing to lose. Last Saturday's hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Mohammed is being held, was merely to establish whether he had been correctly designated an "enemy combatant". Sometime in the future a trial awaits, at which he will surely be found guilty and sentenced to death. If he is to die, he doubtless calculates, far better to do so not as a small terrorist fish, but as one of the main architects of what George Bush describes as the first global conflict of the 21st century.

Nonetheless, some of his ruminations on the broader nature of terrorism, conveyed in a mixture of broken English and translated Arabic, are worth listening to, and not only because they come from a man who knows his murderous business inside out. It may be small comfort indeed to hear from this organiser of the deadliest terror attack of the modern era, in which 3,000 people died, that "I don't like to kill children and the kids". But then again, as he notes, "the language of war is victims," and whether the death or suffering of those victims is justified is very much a matter of perspective.

Mohammed likens Osama bin Laden to George Washington, Britain's enemy in the American revolutionary war. In one sense, the comparison is absurd. Random violence and the intimidation of civilians is the terrorist's stock in trade, but it was not the strategy of Washington when he led the 13 colonies to independence. But Mohammed reminds us of a truth the Bush administration often and self-defeatingly ignores, that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Washington might not have been a terrorist. But he most certainly would have been classified as an enemy combatant by the government of King George III and, if had been caught, hanged.

For Americans. however, the first president is a hero of mythical status, just as bin Laden's campaign against the US presence in the Middle East has made him a hero for many Muslims today. As for the seizure of parts of Mexico in the 19th century, Mohammed further notes, that might have been "manifest destiny" in American eyes. But for their opponents, wanton imperialism would have been a better description.

Finally, Mohammed makes a plea for mercy - not for himself, but for the dozens or more detainees being held without trial at Guantanamo Bay, even though the evidence that they were "enemy combatants" is flimsy or non-existent. Five years on, it is ludicrous to argue that these wretched individuals, whose main mistake was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, have some vestigial intelligence value. It is not too late for the Bush administration to heed this suggestion, even if it comes from one of the most lethal enemy combatants of all.