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WASHINGTON: Top al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed has confessed to plotting the September 11 attacks at a
closed-door US military hearing.
Mohammed, a Pakistani, claimed
responsibility for the 9/11 strikes and a multitude of other attacks
and plots in a statement read by a US military officer representing
him at the hearing at the US base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
“I was responsible for the 9/11
Operation, from A to Z,” said the statement read in Mohammed’s
name, according to the transcript.
In it, he said he was behind the
1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 2002 bombing of a nightclub
in Bali, Indonesia, among other plots, according to the transcript
of the session.
Although he did not read the
statement himself, Mohammed told the tribunal he wrote it. He also
made a long, rambling statement justifying his actions as part of a
holy war against the United States.
“What I wrote here, is not
I’m making myself hero, when I said I was responsible for this or
that,” he said in broken English. “But you are military man. You
know very well there are language for any war.”
“If America they want to invade
Iraq they will not send for Saddam roses or kisses. They send for a
bombardment,” he said. “For sure I am American enemies.”
At one point, he compared al-Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden to George Washington.
“He is doing the same thing. He
is just fighting. He needs his independence,” he said.
The Pentagon released redacted
transcripts of the March 10 hearing along with those of two other
captured al-Qaeda operatives—Abu Faraj al-Libi and Ramzi bin Al-Shibh.
So far six terror suspects have
gone before the military panels since the hearings began on Friday
on the “enemy combatant” status of 14 top terror suspects held
by the United States.
The hearings are to determine
whether the detainee can be deemed an “enemy combatant.” Such a
designation would clear the way for a criminal trial in front of a
US military tribunal.
Captured in 2003, Mohammed is the
most important of the 14, who were moved to Guantánamo last year
from secret CIA detention facilities overseas.
The presiding officer at one
point alluded to a written statement made by Mohammed in which he
claimed to have been tortured while in the custody of US agents
before arriving in Guantánamo.
When questioned whether he was
speaking under duress at the hearing, Mohammed said he was not.
Evidence found on computer hard
drives linking Mohammed to the September 11 attacks and other plots
was presented against him during the hearing, which was closed to
the press.
He is also believed to have taken
part in the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl
in Pakistan in 2002, but from the transcript it was not clear
whether he claimed responsibility for the killing.
The Pentagon deleted one of the
items in the list of 31 operations that Mohammed claimed to have
been involved in.
But in the statement he laid out
a dizzying assortment of attacks and plots against US, British and
Israeli targets.
They included a “second wave”
of attacks on US skyscrapers and other landmarks that were supposed
to follow the September 11 attacks on the United States.
The Empire State Building in New
York, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Library Tower in California
and the Plaza Bank in Washington State were among the targets of the
second wave.
He said he planned to destroy the
Sears Tower “by burning a few fuel or oil tanker trucks beneath it
or around it.”
The New York Stock Exchange and
other financial sites were targeted for destruction, he said.
“I was responsible for
planning, surveying and financing for the operation to destroy
Heathrow Airport, the Canary Wharf Building, and Big Ben on British
soil,” his statement said.
He said he was responsible for
assassination plots on former US President Bill Clinton and Pope
John Paul II in the Philippines, and a plot to kill former president
Jimmy Carter at an unspecified location.
The statement said he was behind
the bombing of a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya frequented by Jewish
travelers, and the launching a Russian-made SA-7 surface-to-air
missile at an airliner departing from Kenya.
In another plot, he planned to
use airplanes flying out of Saudi Arabia to destroy buildings in
Elat, Israel, and plotted to destroy Israeli embassies in a number
of countries, according to the statement.
He sent several mujahideen
fighters into Israel “to conduct surveillance to hit several
strategic targets deep in Israel,” according to the statement.
US embassies in various countries
and US military bases in South Korea and Turkey also were on his
list of targets.
He said plotted operations
against US warships and oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, the
Straits of Gibraltar and the port of Singapore. And he planned to
bomb and destroy the Panama Canal, his statement said.
An attack that killed two US
soldiers in Kuwait and a “shoe bomber” operation to down two US
airplanes also were his responsibility, he said in the statement. So
was a plot in the 1990s to blow up a dozen US airliners over the
Pacific, he said.
--AFP
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