Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged number three in al-Qaeda, confessed to planning the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 2001, in front of the secret military tribunals being held for the top detainees in Guantánamo, the Pentagon said on Wednesday night.
Mohammed expressed sorrow for those who had died in the attacks and said that he ”did not like to kill children” but that ”in war there were always victims”.
The apparent confession was contained in a 26-page transcript of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which the Pentagon released on Wednesday night as part of the procedures of the closed-door sessions with 14 terror suspects. Mohammed has long been alleged to have played a key role in the conceiving and organising of 9/11, but never before has there been what is said to be his own admission.
According to the Pentagon transcript, he told the tribunal panel of three military officers and a government-provided representative on Saturday that he admitted responsibility for the attacks on September 11 as well as a string of other outrages, including the bombing of a nightclub in Bali and an attempt to bring two American planes down, using shoe bombs.
”I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z. I was the operational director for Sheikh Usama [Osama] bin Laden for the organising, planning, follow-up and execution of the 9/11 operation,” he allegedly confesses through his personal representative.
He allegedly also confesses to being a member of the al-Qaeda council and the ”military operational commander for all foreign operations”. These include surveying the assassination of former United States presidents, including Jimmy Carter, and planning to bomb suspension bridges in New York. In all, he has allegedly confessed to being responsible for 31 separate attacks or planned attacks, including ones on Heathrow airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben in London.
It is not clear why Mohammed would have wished to confess to such a wide-ranging number of outrages. The alleged confession is likely, however, to stiffen the resolve of the Bush administration in pursuing its controversial policy of putting the biggest cases of suspected terrorism through the closed military hearings.
The procedures have come under intense criticism from human rights groups on the grounds that the defendants are not entitled to normal rights of legal representation, and the hearings are closed to public scrutiny.
A separate transcript of another top al-Qaeda suspect, Abi Faraj al-Libi, also released on Wednesday 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.
Mohammed refused to take the oath before addressing the military tribunal, as he said that to do so would be to recognise the system. But he said that did not imply he intended to lie to the officials present.
In broken English, he likened al-Qaeda to the founding fathers of the US and Bin Laden to George Washington.
”We and George Washington doing same thing,” he allegedly said. If he were alive now, Washington would be called an enemy combatant — his designation in Guantánamo — by Britain.
He expressed sorrow for those who died on 9/11: ”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.”
But he went on to accuse the US of double standards, saying America made an exception of the rule when it killed people in Iraq. ”You said we have to do it. We don’t like Saddam. But this is the way to deal with Saddam.” His conclusion: ”Same language you use, I use.”
The 9/11 commission concluded of Mohammed that he was ”highly educated and equally comfortable in a government office or a terrorist safehouse, KSM applied his imagination, technical aptitude and managerial skills to hatching and planning an extraordinary array of terrorist schemes. These included car bombing, political assassination, aircraft bombing, hijacking, reservoir poisoning, and, ultimately, the use of aircraft as missiles guided by suicide operatives.”
Time magazine reported last October that he had been the one to personally wield the knife that killed the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
The FBI was closely involved in his arrest in Rawalpindi in March 2003 and along with the CIA took over his detention and interrogation in secret locations.
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. – Guardian Unlimited Â