Guantánamo photos of accused 9/11 mastermind hit Web
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/brea...y/1224587.html
By CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com
Pictures of accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his nephew posing for Red Cross delegates at Guantánamo have suddenly turned up on the Web, offering a rare glimpse into life inside the prison's secret Camp 7 just days ahead of the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The photo of Mohammed, on his knees as if preparing for prayer but staring straight into the camera, is the first public picture of the alleged arch-terrorist since his widely circulated capture photo -- showing him pulled from his bed in a torn T-shirt, with messy hair and in need of a shave. Pakistani security forces in Rawalpindi took that image at his March 2003 arrest and then turned him over to the CIA for interrogations that reportedly included 183 episodes of waterboarding to get him to spill al Qaeda secrets.
In the latest photo, Mohammed, 44, looks fit, with a massive, bushy, gray-speckled beard covering the chest of his white detention center uniform. He is kneeling on a typical Guantánamo-issue prayer mat, clutching prayer beads in his right hand. His head is covered with a red-checked turban and he has fashioned a bed sheet into a prayer cloak.
Pentagon officials at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba have flatly forbidden media access to the camp for former CIA captives and have likewise only permitted an approved court sketch artist to draw Mohammed and his four fellow accused 9/11 plotters during military commissions proceedings at their complex conspiracy, death-penalty case.
The latest photos first showed up on Arabic language websites seen as sympathetic to al Qaeda last week, according to counter-terror expert Jarret Brachman, who posted them on the ``Jihadi personalities'' portion of his blog, http://jarretbrachman.net/, late Tuesday. He credited a fellow counter-terror cyber sleuth with the discovery.
It was not immediately known when the photos were taken, but Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, a Guantánamo spokesman, said early Wednesday they ``appeared to be photos that originated from an ICRC visit'' -- a reference to the regular meetings between delegates of the International Committee for the Red Cross and the 226 Guantánamo detainees.
Pakistani-born Ammar al Baluchi, Mohammed's 32-year-old nephew, likewise appears on a prayer rug, cross-legged and clutching prayer beads -- but with a typical Afghan tribesman cap on his head. He is also well groomed, seated on a prayer rug and wearing typical Guantánamo-issue slide-on blue rubber sneakers on his feet.
Red Cross photos of the detainees first began circulating in public in May, after ICRC delegates began sending them to the captives' family members. Digital copies of others have appeared on the Web, occasionally blurry photos of the photos taken with handheld phones.
But these are the first known images from among the 15-man detainee population in the custody of Task Force Platinum, a special military unit at Guantánamo that runs Camp 7 as a segregated site so they cannot describe their CIA treatment and where they were held to other prisoners or guards in the general population.
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