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 Al-Qaeda suspect takes credit for 9/11, Pearl slaying
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http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/index.html
Al-Qaeda suspect takes credit for 9/11, Pearl slaying
Andrew Gray, Reuters
Published: Thursday, March 15, 2007
WASHINGTON - The al Qaeda suspect who claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks also said he beheaded U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl, according to a Pentagon transcript released Thursday.
During a hearing at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp Saturday, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said he was involved in more than 30 attacks or plots. The Pentagon said it had withheld sections on Pearl's 2002 killing until it could inform the reporter's family.
"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl," Mohammed said in a statement, according to the transcript.
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Daniel Pearl, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, was abducted in Karachi in January, 2002, and beheaded after two weeks in captivity.
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Pearl, a 38-year-old reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in 2002.
During Saturday's closed hearing, Mohammed also claimed responsibility for a nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia, and an attempt to down two American airplanes using shoe bombs, according to a Pentagon transcript released Wednesday.
Some security experts suggested Mohammed, alleged by U.S. officials to have been al Qaeda's external operations chief, was exaggerating his importance and questioned his reliability after years in custody subjected to harsh interrogation.
But Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003 and handed over to U.S. agents, is widely considered to have been a senior al Qaeda figure.
U.S. officials say he was the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks and a main suspect in the Pearl case.
During the military hearing, Mohammed himself spoke about Pearl's killing and said it was not an al Qaeda operation.
"It's like beheading Daniel Pearl. It’s not related to al Qaida (Qaeda)," the transcript quoted him as saying.
The transcript contains a reference to alleged mistreatment of Mohammed in U.S. custody. But the suspect said he was not speaking under duress at the hearing, held to determine whether he meets the U.S. definition of an enemy combatant.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he was not aware if an investigation into mistreatment had been launched.
If Mohammed is classed as an enemy combatant, he could face trial before a military commission on war crimes charges.
He was among 14 prisoners identified by U.S. authorities as "high-value" terrorism suspects and transferred to Guantanamo last year from secret CIA prisons abroad.
U.S. officials closed the hearing and edited out parts of the transcript, a practice the Pentagon said was necessary to remove sensitive security information.
The transcript supported U.S. allegations that Mohammed was the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in which Islamist militants crashed hijacked airliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon and killed nearly 3,000 people.
"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z," Mohammed said through his representative, according to the transcript.
Paul Pillar, the former senior U.S. intelligence analyst on the Middle East and South Asia, said Mohammed was an important figure, even if he was overstating his role.
"There seems to be some exaggeration in terms of what he claims to be responsible for," Pillar said. "But there is absolutely no doubt that he is possibly the most significant figure in jihadi terrorism of the past decade."
Other analysts were more skeptical.
"He’s claiming to be the superman and the superhero and the superterrorist," said Mustafa Alani, an al Qaeda expert at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.
"If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is that important and that big, al Qaeda (should be) dead and buried by now."
(Additional reporting by David Morgan in Washington and Mark Trevelyan in London)
The Pentagon posted the transcript on the Internet at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/transcript_ISN10024.pdf.
It also released transcripts of hearings for two others of the 14 detainees transferred last year, Ramzi bin al Shaibah, a Yemeni also accused of involvement in the September 11 attacks, and alleged senior al Qaeda figure Abu Faraj al Libi of Libya.
Neither man attended his hearing, according to the transcripts which can be seen at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Combatant_Tribunals.html.
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