Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Confesses To 9/11 Through A "Personal Representative"

US senators urge probe into 9/11 suspect's claims of abuse

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_senators_urge_probe_into_9_11_su_03162007.html

Published: Friday March 16, 2007

Two US senators who witnessed the questioning of the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks have urged officials to investigate his allegations of being badly treated.

Democratic Senator Carl Levin and his Republican colleague Lindsay Graham revealed in a joint statement that they were allowed to watch a hearing for Khaled Sheikh Mohammed at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay via a video link in an adjoining room.

Mohammed confessed to 31 acts of terror or plots including the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, according to a transcript of the hearing released by the Pentagon this week.

The senators agreed the transcript of the proceedings, which lasted more than an hour on Saturday, March 10, was accurate.

And they confirmed that Mohammed, who has no right to a lawyer and was represented by a military officer, had handed the panel a written statement "alleging mistreatment during his captivity prior to arriving at Guantanamo."

This statement has been censored and was not released along with the transcript of his hearing.

"The panel said the allegations will be submitted to appropriate authorities. Allegations of prisoner mistreatment must be taken seriously and properly investigated. To do otherwise would reflect poorly on our nation," the lawmakers said in a joint statement.

They also agreed that a hearing at which the detainee admits the allegations against him was not "the true test" of a process which would be in "a case in which the detainee disputes those allegations."

Mohammed, thought to be the number three leader of the Al-Qaeda network, told the panel that he had planned the September 11, 2001 attacks from "A to Z".

He also claimed to have been behind a host of other attacks and plots, most of which were never realized, such as assassination attempts on former US presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and the late Pope John Paul II.

He also said he had personally beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl, who was abducted in January 2002 in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi and then killed.

"It was apparent that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed views himself as a warrior, motivated by religious teachings, and seeks his place in history," the senators said.

They added they would "continue to review the process and will explore possible ways to improve this process through congressional action."

Mohammed has been held in controversial circumstances, most of the time in complete secrecy, since his capture in Pakistan in 2003. He has no access to a lawyer and allegations have been made that he was tortured while in US custody.

Human Rights Watch called Thursday for the United States to release Mohammed's separate statement in which he claims to have been tortured while held by the CIA.

No media or human rights monitors were allowed to watch the hearing.
 
I've read that before also, where there were contradictory reports on KSM and bin Al Shibs arrest, apprently there's some sort of conspiracy there but it hard to follow since pictures and videos of there capture are there.
 
The Confession Backfired

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts201.html

by Paul Craig Roberts
3/17/2007

The first confession released by the Bush regime’s Military Tribunals – that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – has discredited the entire process. Writing in Jurist, Northwestern University law professor Anthony D’Amato likens Mohammed’s confession to those that emerged in Stalin’s show trials of Bolshevik leaders in the 1930s.

That was my own immediate thought. I remember speaking years ago with Soviet dissident Valdimir Bukovsky about the behavior of Soviet dissidents under torture. He replied that people pressed for names under torture would try to remember the names of war dead and people who had passed away. Those who retained enough of their wits under torture would confess to an unbelievable array of crimes in an effort to alert the public to the falsity of the entire process.

That is what Mohammed did. We know he was tortured, because his response to the obligatory question about his treatment during his years of detention is redacted. We also know that he was tortured, because otherwise there is no point for the US Justice (sic) Dept. memos giving the green light to torture or for the Military Commissions Act, which permits torture and death sentence based on confession extracted by torture.

Mohammed’s confession of crimes and plots is so vast that Katherine Shrader of the Associated Press reports that the Americans who extracted Mohammed’s confession do not believe it either. It is exaggerated, say Mohammed’s tormentors, and must be taken with a grain of salt.

In other words, the US torture crew, reveling in their success, played into Mohammed’s hands. Pride goes before a fall, as the saying goes.

Mohammed’s confession admits to 31 planned and actual attacks all over the world, including blowing up the Panama Canal and assassinating presidents Carter and Clinton and the Pope. Having taken responsibility for the whole ball of wax along with everything else that he could imagine, he was the entire show. No other terrorists needed.

Reading responses of BBC listeners to Mohammed’s confession reveals that the rest of the world is either laughing at the US government for being so stupid as to think that anyone anywhere would believe the confession or damning the Bush regime for being like the Gestapo and KGB.

Humorists are having a field day with the confession: "’I’m a very dangerous mastermind,’ said Mohammed, who confessed to the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, the Brink’s robbery, St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and the Lincoln and McKinley assassinations. Mohammed also accepted responsibility for spreading hay fever and cold sores around the world and for rained out picnics."

If there was anything remaining of the Bush regime not already discredited, Mohammed’s confession removed any reputation left.

The most important part of the Mohammed story is yet to make the headlines. Despite having held and tortured hundreds of detainees for years in Gitmo, and we don’t know how many more in secret prisons around the world, the US government has come up with only 14 "high value detainees."

In other words, the government has nothing on 99 percent of the detainees who allegedly are so dangerous and wicked that they must be kept in detention without charges, access to attorneys and contact with families.

And little wonder. The vast majority of detainees, alleged "enemy combatants," are not terrorists captured by the CIA and brave US troops. They are hapless persons who happened to be outside their tribal or home territories and were kidnapped by criminal gangs or war lords who profited greatly at the expense of the naive Americans who offered bounties for "terrorists."

The US government does not care that innocent people have been ensnared, because the US government desperately needs both to prove that there are vast numbers of terrorists and to demonstrate its proficiency in protecting Americans by capturing terrorists. Moreover, the US government needs "dangerous suspects" that it can use to keep Americans in a state of supine fearfulness and as a front behind which to undermine constitutional protections and the Bill of Rights.

The Bush-Cheney Regime succeeded in its evil plot, only to throw it all away by releasing the ridiculous confession by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Will Bush’s totalitarian Military Tribunal now execute Mohammed on the basis of his confession extracted by torture, or would this be seen everywhere on earth as nothing but an act of murder?

If Bush can’t have Mohammed murdered, the US government will have to shut Mohammed away where he cannot talk and tell his tale. The US government will have to replicate Orwell’s memory hole by destroying Mohammed’s mind with mind-altering drugs and abuse.

It is to such depths that George Bush and Dick Cheney have lowered America.
 
Pearl Family Doubts KSM Confession

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/03/exclusive_pearl.html

Dana Hughes
March 16, 2007 7:04 PM

The father of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl says he doesn't believe al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed is the man who beheaded his son, despite Mohammed's confession to a US military tribunal.

"He wants to take credit for doing it, and he wants to exonerate al Qaeda, blame Pakistan, and whatever," said Judea Pearl, Danny's father. "When a person confesses and he has nothing to lose. You have to take it with a spice of doubt."

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Pearl said that from what he knows about the investigation there are still many unanswered questions trailing back to Pakistan. "We still don't know the whereabouts of the guy who owned the nursery , Memon, where Danny was held," said Pearl. "We don’t know the identities and the whereabouts of the three Arabs who came the last day [of Danny's captivity] and performed the murder." While Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claims to be one of them, Pearl says the facts "don't match his story."

Pearl worries that since KSM has confessed to his son's murder, it will be easy for the U.S. Government to slow down or close the investigation into the tragedy.

"Governments are tired, they have bureaucracy, they have other pressing issues that are higher priorities, so they tend to forget the human injustices," he says. "If one person is murdered, a government tends to forget it."

Law enforcement sources insist that there is hard forensic evidence that links KSM to the murder of Pearl.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales personally called the Pearl family to inform them of Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s gruesome confession, Pearl said.

Judea Pearl voiced objections that the world was allowed to read the transcripts of KSM's confession.

"There's no need for the public to read his diatribes about how bad America is and read graphic details of his crimes," he says. "You know what this does? It sends a message to his comrades in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. We don’t understand that these people are aroused by cruelty."

Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who worked with Daniel Pearl and became a close friend of his family, told ABC News the release of the transcripts has brought up painful memories for his family and friends.

"It's a place that's very dark, and for it to go again and be splashed on the front pages of newspapers is like going back down into a very very terrible nightmare," she says.

Danny Pearl was staying with Nomani in Karachi when he was abducted and murdered. She also expressed doubts that KSM murdered Pearl.

"Anyone who saw the tape of Danny’s murder could confess to those details," she told ABC News. “From everyone I've talked to in Danny's family there isn't closure. Really at the end of the day there's not convincing evidence that Khalid Sheik Mohammed was the killer."

Now a visiting journalism professor at Georgetown University, Nomani is heading up The Pearl Project, a university sponsored investigative reporting project where a team of journalism students and professors will spend a year investigating who killed her former colleague.

The project has the blessing of Judea and Mrs. Pearl, as well as that of as Danny Pearl’s widow Mariane. Judea Pearl says finding the real killers and bringing them to justice is not only about the family’s healing, but will serve a greater purpose.

"It sends a message to the millions and millions of youth that are currently on the verge of joining the ideology of unruly violence that there will always be people like Asra or Danny; reporters that are probing, courageous, truth-minded and open-minded. They will be after you."

For now, he says, the family is trying to concentrate on how Danny lived, and not how he died. "I'm not going back, I’m looking at the future."

The family runs the Daniel Pearl Foundation, dedicated to using journalism, music and community dialogue as a way of fostering understanding between young people in the Arab world and the United States. Pearl says he wants to counter what he says is the extremist propaganda that comes out of some Arab media. In particular, Pearl was outraged at Al Jazeera's use of quotation marks around the term "terror plot" when the Qatar-based network describing the acts to which KSM confessed. "They are contributors to the hate that killed my son," he says.

"I see myself as a soldier. History has given me a combination of tragedy and opportunity, and if I don’t exploit the opportunity then all I’m left with is tragedy," says Pearl.

"I'm compelled to harness all the energy that this tragedy has evoked for a good cause, and the cause is to eradicate the hate that took Danny's life."
 
Wow. Pearl family speaking out is big. I've seen that HBO documentary on this where they go in depth with Marial Perle, she really knows her stuff.
 
Confession of 9/11 architect backfires on US

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2368990.ece

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published:^18 March 2007

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's dramatic confessions before a US military hearing are beginning to backfire on the Bush administration. Legal experts are casting serious doubt about their validity as evidence, and human rights activists say they only illuminate a "sham process" of justice in the US war on terror, including the apparent use of torture on Mohammed and potentially dozens of other al-Qa'ida suspects.

Mohammed's claims to have been fully responsible for the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, the murder of Daniel Pearl, the 2002 Bali disco bombings and a host of lesser plots, both hatched and fully realised, were made public to great fanfare last week.

Almost immediately, however, legal experts said he appeared to be exaggerating his role for his own self-aggrandisement and may also have deliberately floated false claims to send US investigators on wild goose chases.

The CIA denies that Mohammed was tortured, but evidence to the contrary has been building for years. Two years ago, a CIA official told ABC News that he had been water-boarded, and had won the admiration of his interrogators because it took him two to two-and-half minutes to start confessing - well beyond the average of 14 seconds observed in others.
 
9/11 Attacker's Words Put Doubts On Confession

http://wjz.com/topstories/topstories_story_075100704.html

3/18/2007

(AP) WASHINGTON Wearing an orange jumpsuit and with his hands chained, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed quoted from the Quran and cited George Washington as he attempted to justify the horrors of 9/11 - providing the first glimpse into the mind of the alleged architect of the attacks.

Mohammed's statements during a hearing at Guantanamo Bay, in which he confessed to planning 31 terrorist attacks, also raise questions about the effect that years of rough CIA interrogations may have had and whether his confession is valid.

"As a result of torture, KSM himself falsely implicated various other people who he says are innocent," said Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney for several other Guantanamo detainees. He cited Mohammed's statements, which did not name names.

In a censored transcript of Saturday's hearing issued late Wednesday by the Pentagon, the tribunal president noted that Mohammed complained that he had been tortured by the CIA, and asked if he made statements because of the torture. Mohammed, who was transferred to Guantanamo from CIA custody in September, responded, "I cannot remember now," but the rest of his sentence and other remarks on that point were censored by the military.

Later in the encounter, Mohammed said he and other prisoners had made false statements during interrogation, apparently under torture. He submitted a written statement about how he allegedly was tortured, but the military refused to divulge it. Human Rights Watch on Thursday urged its release.

"It is a glaring misuse of the classification power for the government to classify information simply because it might be embarrassing or unlawful," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Mohammed's claims of torture should be investigated rather than concealed."

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano denied the torture allegations. "The United States does not conduct or condone torture," he said.

Two psychiatrists, in interviews with The Associated Press, said Mohammed's admissions on Saturday do not appear to be the result of torture but might be exaggerated for tactical reasons, as part of his continued fight against the United States.

The three-member U.S. military panel - their names were censored - aims to determine whether Mohammed is an enemy combatant and should continue to be held at the military prison in Cuba. Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, who has the ultimate say on the matter, is expected to make a decision within days.

Military guards brought Mohammed, dressed in the orange jumpsuit reserved for noncompliant prisoners, into the hearing room in a doublewide trailer inside the prison complex at Guantanamo Bay, then left. Only those with the proper security clearance can be present when the detainee speaks. The guards left Mohammed in handcuffs and sitting on a chair, his feet connected by a chain to the floor.

Mohammed is now much slimmer than the chubby man who was captured in 2003, according to an official who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

According to the transcript, Mohammed cited a verse from the Quran that said Allah forbids Muslims to become friendly with those who fight them because of their faith. He also said many Muslims view Osama bin Laden as a heroic figure like George Washington.

Two psychiatrists, who reviewed his statements, said he appears committed to his cause.

"There's no evidence in his statements that he has relinquished any sense of purpose or mission," said Michael Welner, an expert on terrorism and confessions and an associate professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine.

In a statement read by an Air Force lieutenant colonel, designated as Mohammed's personal representative, Mohammed claimed responsibility for planning Sept. 11 and 30 other attacks, many of which were not carried out. After the list was read, a U.S. Navy captain serving as the tribunal president, immediately asked Mohammed if those were his words.

"Yes," Mohammed responded.

"I want to be clear, though, is that you were the author of that document," the president asked again.

"That's right," Mohammed insisted, adding at another point that he is an enemy of the United States.

"I see him as rather feisty and combative and nothing indicating a guy confessing things after being ... tortured," said Jerrold M. Post, director of the Political Psychology Program at George Washington University and a 21-year veteran of the CIA. "He's somewhat proudly stating, perhaps overstating, the extent of the operations he has been involved with."

Mohammed might be exaggerating the number of targets he intended to attack in order to spread "the message of fear," Post said.

Welner said Mohammed may have been misleading interrogators, mixing in information about false plots along with ones that were real.

"If he decides there is something he wants to misinform interrogators about he can do it, and only he will know he is doing it," Welner said. "It presents a tremendous challenge for law enforcement ... and the motive could be to divert investigators away from a more significant plot.

"He is still invested in his cause," Welner said. "He is still fighting his war. That's not going to change."
 
Experts dispute Sheikh’s claim about Pearl

http://www.dawn.com/2007/03/17/top12.htm

GUANTANAMO, March 16: The claim of suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that he had personally beheaded American journalist Daniel Pearl has been dismissed by experts and his journalism colleagues as baseless.

“It's ludicrous and preposterous,” said Paul Steiger, the Journal's managing editor, of the claim made at a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay. The journalist’s parents said it was impossible to know whether the claim “has any bearing in truth.”—AP
 
Lawyer to appeal Pearl case conviction

http://www.centredaily.com/135/story/44565.html

By SADAQAT JAN - Associated Press Writer
3/19/2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The lawyer for a man convicted of killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl said Sunday he will file an appeal using an al-Qaida lieutenant's recent confession that he beheaded the reporter.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has claimed that he planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, claimed at a U.S. military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he personally beheaded Pearl for being an Israeli intelligence agent.

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed told a military panel, according to a Pentagon transcript released Thursday. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."

In 2002, an anti-terrorism court in Karachi sentenced Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born militant, to death and gave three other men life in prison for involvement in Pearl's killing.

Rai Bashir a lawyer for Sheikh and the other three men said on Sunday that he will study the Pentagon documents on Mohammed's claim and file his confession as evidence to prove Sheikh's innocence.

"He has not abducted Daniel Pearl, and he, along with his co-accused, is innocent ... But now we are happy that this version has been verified by the Pentagon after the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Bashir told AP Television News in a separate interview on Saturday.

Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Karachi while he was researching a story on Islamic militancy. Months after his abduction, the journalist's body, his throat slit, was found in a shallow ditch in a compound on the outskirts of the city.

Sheikh and the three others - Salman Saqib, Fahad Naseem and Sheikh Adil - are in jail and have appealed their convictions.

"What we were saying for so many years in our trial, in the appeal, (is) that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh is innocent and he has not committed that murder," Bashir said in the interview from the eastern city of Lahore.
 
9/11 mastermind says he killed Daniel Pearl
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed claims he cut off the head of the kidnapped American journalist.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...y?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true

By Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writer
March 16, 2007

WASHINGTON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed planner of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, admitted during a military tribunal last weekend that he killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, according to a revised transcript of the hearing that confirmed long-held suspicions about his role in the slaying.

The Al Qaeda operative said he cut off Pearl's head after the journalist was kidnapped on a reporting trip to Pakistan in 2002.

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed said in a statement delivered by a U.S. military officer serving as his representative. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."

The admission was blocked out of a hearing transcript released Wednesday by the Pentagon, giving the impression that Mohammed was implicating others in the slaying. But Defense Department officials released a mostly uncensored version Thursday after notifying Pearl's family that the statement would be included.

"It was a very graphic description," said Bryan Whitman, the senior Pentagon spokesman who made the decision to withhold the information for a day. "We just felt it was important to get to the family to let them know it was going to be in there."

Pearl, who was the Wall Street Journal's South Asia bureau chief, was abducted in Karachi in January 2002 while reporting on a story about would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid.

Pakistani authorities quickly arrested Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, a Pakistani with links to militant groups, and later convicted him of masterminding the abduction. He was sentenced to death. The case is being appealed.

Mohammed has long been suspected of playing a role in the killing. Shortly after Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in March 2003, U.S. officials told Pearl's wife, Mariane, and Journal reporters that they suspected Mohammed was the killer.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf wrote in his memoirs last year that although Sheikh lured Pearl to Karachi, where he was kidnapped by Sheikh's accomplices, the killing was conducted by an "Arab-looking" man, who turned out to be Mohammed.

"When we later arrested and interrogated him, he admitted his participation," Musharraf wrote of Mohammed.

Although Mohammed's confession came in a military tribunal that was closed to outside observers, and he was barred from being represented by a lawyer, he told the panel he was making his statements freely and without coercion.

In his statement, Mohammed said pictures of Pearl's killing were proof of his involvement. But Rita Katz, a terrorism expert at the SITE Institute, which tracks extremist websites, said none of the videos or photos distributed on the Internet showed the faces of the men who participated in Pearl's decapitation.

In a statement Thursday, Pearl's parents said they did not know if they believed Mohammed's admission.

"It is impossible to know at this point whether Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's boast about killing our son has any bearing in truth," they said. "We prefer to focus our energy on continuing Danny's lifework through the programs of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, which aims to eradicate the hatred that took his life."

During his military hearing, Mohammed delivered a long speech in partially broken English in which he said he thought Pearl was working for Israeli intelligence and was trying to determine if Reid had traveled to Israel to scout for potential targets.

"His mission was in Pakistan to track about Richard Reid trip to Israel," Mohammed said. "His mission in Pakistan [was] from Israeli intelligence, Mossad, to make interview to ask about when he was there."
 
Two former CIA officials: Pearl was on the trail of a 9-11 mastermind

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1002/pearl_mission.asp

By Richard Sale and Anwar Iqbal

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (UPI) Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was investigating the man who allegedly planned the Sept. 11 airplane hijackings and attacks on New York and Washington when he was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, according to two former Central Intelligence Agency officials.

Bob Baer, a former case officer in the agency's Directorate of Operations, said he provided Pearl with unpublished information about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has since been accused by American officials of being one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a top aide to Osama bin Laden. Mohammed is currently the operational chief of al Qaida, other U.S. intelligence officials said.

Next to bin Laden, Mohammed is one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.

"I was working with Pearl," said Baer, who has written a book about his time as a CIA official and has acted as a consultant and source for numerous media outlets. "We had a joint project. Mohammed was the story he was working on, not Richard Reid."

But a spokesman for The Wall Street Journal disagreed with Baer's account. "Everything we know from before and after Danny's murder indicates his reporting effort was focused on Richard Reid. Also, we don't believe he was engaged in a 'joint project' with anyone outside The Journal."

Shortly after Pearl's kidnapping and subsequent murder in Karachi, Pakistan last winter, it was reported he was tracing the background of Reid, who was seized on a Boston-bound American Airlines jet from Paris allegedly trying to ignite explosive in his shoes. According to that account, Reid had gone to Karachi to contact a man called Sheik Mubarek Gilani to get information on Reid.

Baer said that instead Pearl was onto bigger and more dangerous game. "I urged him to go to Pakistan to look into Shaikh Mohammed."

Another former 30-year veteran of CIA confirmed Baer's account. He asked that his name not be used, but he endorsed Baer: "I'm surprised Baer is on the record, but he really knows his stuff on this."

Baer said that he believes it was Mohammed who had Pearl killed.

"I have heard from (intelligence) people who follow this closely that it was people close to Mohammad that killed him, if it wasn't Mohammed himself," he said.

Shortly after Pearl was kidnapped, Pakistani officials too said they doubted the story that the young reporter was looking into Richard Reid. A spokesman for Pakistan's military government, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, told United Press International that Pakistani officials could not understand why Pearl was visiting Karachi to meet a religious leader who lived in Lahore.

Gilani, the person Pearl was reportedly trying to meet, heads Jamaat-ul-Fuqra or the Party of the Poor, and has thousands of followers around the world, including the United States.

Gilani and his followers are long believed to have been involved in terrorist acts and appear on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.

Gilani, however, lives in Lahore, which is closer to the Pakistani capital Islamabad where Pearl was before he flew to the southern port city of Karachi -- hundreds of miles south of Lahore.

Pakistani intelligence sources told UPI that Mohammed, the man Pearl was actually trying to track down, also had links to Gilani and his party.

On July 15, an anti-terrorism court in the southern Pakistani city of Hyderabad convicted four men for kidnapping and murdering Pearl. The suspected ringleader, British-born Pakistani Ahmad Omar Saeed Shaikh, better known as Shaikh Omar, was sentenced to death while three others were sent to jail for life.

Throughout the trial, Omar maintained that -- although he knew how and by who Pearl had been killed -- he was not himself responsible.

Subsequently, there were reports that four other men had also been arrested by Pakistani police in connection with the murder. But Pakistani security officials told UPI that in order for the new suspects to be put on trial, the four convicted men would also have to be tried again, because evidence against the new suspects undermined the case against Omar and his accomplices.

Mohammed was seen in Islamabad's posh F-7 sector when Pakistani and U.S. officials arrested Ramzi Yusuf, the man who tried to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.

The director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Josef Bodansky, told UPI emphatically, "Mohammed was Pearl's killer."

"An Algerian actually did the job, but Mohammed gave the order for the killing. There's no question about it," he said. Bodansky said Mohammed also has ties to Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency, which he said had acted to shield him in the past.

"Mohammed was running operations right in Karachi," said Bodansky. Bodansky would not reveal his sources of information.

According to Baer, he was first informed of Mohammed's role as a key aide to terrorist mastermind bin Laden as early as December 1997 when he met a former police chief from Doha, Qatar, at a dinner in Damascus.

In 1997, Baer had left the agency to become a consultant in Beirut. Terrorism was Baer's field and Baer began to meet the ex-Doha police chief from time to time. The ex-Doha police chief, who Baer declined to identify by name, told Baer that during the course of his work he found that there was a bin Laden cell in Qatar, being sheltered by the Qatari government.

The two main members of the cell were Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Shawqui Islambuli, the brother of the Egyptian who had killed Anwar Sadat. They also were linked to terrorist Ramzi Yousef, but what worried the former police chief was the fact that Mohammed and Islambuli were experts in hijacking commercial planes. The ex-police chief told Baer that Mohammed "is going to hijack some planes." The ex-police chief said his basis for this was evidence developed by police and Qatari intelligence.

The ex-police chief told Baer that Mohammed was being shielded by the Qatar government and told how, in 1996, the FBI sent in a team to arrest Mohammed and Islambuli. While pretending to help, elements in the Qatari government stalled U.S. agents and supplied the two suspects, Mohammed and Islambuli with passports in fake names and spirited them out of the country.

Mohammed went to the Czech Republic where he began to live under the alias "Mustaf Nasir."

Mohammed also traveled to Germany to meet bin Laden associates, Baer said.

Baer sent this information to a friend in the CIA Counter-terrorist Center who forwarded the information to his superiors. Baer heard nothing. "There was no interest," he said.

Baer said he was frustrated and called Pearl. Baer said he told Pearl he had a hot story on terrorism and the fact that a U.S. ally like Qatar was actually working against the United States when it came to bin Laden.

Baer said to his annoyance, Pearl did not begin to work on the story. Nothing was done until the day of the Sept. 11 attacks when Pearl called to talk to Baer. Baer said he gave Pearl all the old information he had and new information he had since obtained -- for example, that there are files on Mohammed in the Qatari Embassy in London.

Baer said he and Pearl then "began to work together" -- in other words, Pearl would get info and check it out with Baer and Baer would feed Pearl what he was getting. It was "a joint project," said Baer. Baer was giving direction, but Pearl's contacts were not confined to Baer.

After Pearl's murder, Baer said, he took his information about Mohammed to the Justice Department, but again, as with the agency, he never received a call nor did the department express any interest.

The case is currently being handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey, Justice Department officials said.

Asked to comment on Baer's information, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna, told UPI, "I will pass this on to my agents, but this is nothing that I've heard of."

A joint congressional probe into Sept.11-related intelligence failures made a veiled reference to "a key al Qaida leader" whose "growing importance to al Qaida" the U.S. intelligence community had failed to recognize. U.S. intelligence, said the committee also did not "anticipate his involvement in the terrorist attack of Sept. 11." The leader in question is widely believed to be Mohammed.
 
Why KSM's Confession Rings False

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1599861,00.html

By ROBERT BAER
Thursday, Mar. 15, 2007

It's hard to tell what the Pentagon's objective really is in releasing the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession. It certainly suggests the Administration is trying to blame KSM for al-Qaeda terrorism, leading us to believe we've caught the master terrorist and that al-Qaeda, and especially the ever-elusive bin Laden, is no longer a threat to the U.S.

But there is a major flaw in that marketing strategy. On the face of it, KSM, as he is known inside the government, comes across as boasting, at times mentally unstable. It's also clear he is making things up. I'm told by people involved in the investigation that KSM was present during Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl's execution but was in fact not the person who killed him. There exists videotape footage of the execution that minimizes KSM's role. And if KSM did indeed exaggerate his role in the Pearl murder, it raises the question of just what else he has exaggerated, or outright fabricated.

Just as importantly, there is an absence of collateral evidence that would support KSM's story. KSM claims he was "responsible for the 9/11 operation from A-Z." Yet he has omitted details that would support his role. For instance, one of the more intriguing mysteries is who recruited and vetted the fifteen Saudi hijackers, the so-called "muscle." The well-founded suspicion is that Qaeda was running a cell inside the Kingdom that spotted these young men and forwarded them to al-Qaeda. KSM and al-Qaeda often appear bumbling, but they would never have accepted recruits they couldn't count on. KSM does not offer us an answer as to how this worked.

KSM has also not offered evidence of state support to al-Qaeda, though there is good evidence there was, even at a low level. KSM himself was harbored by a member of Qatar's royal family after he was indicted in the U.S. for the Bojinka plot — a plan to bomb twelve American airplanes over the Pacific. KSM and al-Qaeda also received aid from supporters in Pakistan, quite possibly from sympathizers in the Pakistani intelligence service. KSM provides no details that would suggest we are getting the full story from him.

Although he claims to have been al-Qaeda's foreign operations chief, he has offered no information about European networks. Today, dozens of investigations are going on in Great Britain surrounding the London tube bombings on July 7, 2005. Yet KSM apparently knew nothing about these networks or has not told his interrogators about them.

The fact is al-Qaeda is too smart to put all of its eggs in one basket. It has not and does not have a field commander, the role KSM has arrogated. It works on the basis of "weak links," mounting terrorist operations by bringing in people on an ad hoc basis, and immediately disbanding the group afterwards.

Until we hear more, the mystery of who KSM is and what he was responsible for is still a mystery.
 
Red Cross says detainees reported abuse

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/politics/16941168.htm

KATHERINE SHRADER
Associated Press
3/20/2007

WASHINGTON - Terror detainees once held in the CIA's secret prisons were kept and questioned under highly abusive conditions, the International Committee of the Red Cross says in a confidential report based on interviews with high-value terror suspects.

The Red Cross said the techniques reported by the 14 prisoners, including sleep deprivation and the use of forced standing and other so-called "stress positions," were particularly harsh when used together. The prisoners were transferred from CIA custody to a military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September.

The CIA's detention methods were designed to soften detainees and make them more likely to talk during interrogation. Human rights organizations say the CIA's extreme conditions of detention and the coercive questioning techniques constitute torture.

The report is the first independent accounting of the detainees' allegations against the CIA since its detention and interrogation program began in 2002.

U.S. officials familiar with the report, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the highly sensitive document has not been released, said it is based entirely on accounts from interviews with detainees and has not been verified. One official cautioned that the claims were made by terror suspects who could be charged in the deaths of innocent civilians.

Red Cross spokesman Simon Schorno said that the committee's visits with the 14 detainees served two purposes: to assess their current conditions in detention and to give them an opportunity to talk about past detentions.

"We do not comment on our findings publicly. The report is a confidential document," Schorno said Monday.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield declined to comment on any ICRC reports, citing the organization's practice of keeping its findings confidential.

Speaking generally of CIA interrogation program, Mansfield said the United States does not practice or condone torture. "CIA's terrorist interrogation program has been conducted lawfully, with great care and close review, producing vital information that has helped disrupt plots and save lives," he added.

House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said he has gotten a general briefing on the ICRC report but has not read it. "There are allegations that are made by these 14, and they are vehemently denied by General Hayden and the intelligence folks," he said, referring to CIA Director Michael Hayden.

Not long after the March 2002 capture of top al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah, the CIA began formalizing its detention and interrogation program. The CIA decided it would need to hold high-value terrorists such as Zubaydah for extended periods in an effort to extract information.

They began using some "enhanced interrogation techniques" - or "EITs" in CIA-speak - with success.

Those widely reported practices include openhanded slapping, induced hypothermia, sleep deprivation and - perhaps most controversially - waterboarding. In that technique, a detainee is made to believe he is drowning.

Buttressed by at least one classified legal opinion from the Justice Department, the CIA believed it was operating lawfully in detaining and interrogating roughly 100 suspected terrorists at locations from Southeast Asia to Europe.

"The (interrogation) procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary," President Bush said in September when he announced that all the CIA's remaining detainees had been moved to military custody at Guantanamo Bay.

Asked last month if the prisons were still empty, a CIA official declined to comment.

During a military hearing to review his detention status this month, the CIA's most prized capture - alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - confessed involvement in 31 plots since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He also said he was tortured.

Two senators present for Mohammed's March 10 hearing - Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. - confirmed the tribunal was presented with a written statement from Mohammed alleging mistreatment before his arrival at Guantanamo, which was made part of the classified record. The senators said the military panel will submit the allegations to the appropriate authorities.

"Allegations of prisoner mistreatment must be taken seriously and properly investigated," Levin and Graham said in their statement. "To do otherwise would reflect poorly on our nation."

A U.S. official said the allegations raised by Mohammed were forwarded to the CIA's inspector general, which has been monitoring the agency's interrogation program for years.

In an interview Tuesday, Levin said he'll also be investigating Mohammed's claims of abuse, starting with his classified statement. Asked if the review by the CIA's top watchdog would be enough, Levin said he wasn't sure it would be sufficient. "They have a responsibility to look at it. That doesn't mean that no one else does," he said.

Levin said he has given a summary of the ICRC report, but he declined to comment on its contents.

Many of the techniques that detainees reported to the ICRC are consistent with published reports about the CIA's interrogation program and its enhanced interrogation techniques.

Yet U.S. counterterrorism officials have long cautioned that al-Qaida members are likely to lie about conditions during captivity and they cite a jihadist training manual obtained by British authorities during a raid on an al-Qaida member's home. The Justice Department made portions of the document public in December 2001, including a lesson on prisons and detention centers that encourages claims of mistreatment.

The ICRC has a policy of not releasing reports on its visits with prisoners. The Geneva-based organization believes that allows its officials to get repeated and unrestricted access to prisoners. When necessary, the organization urges the detaining authorities to make improvements.

"The price of this is a policy of confidentiality, taking up the problems only with the people directly concerned," according to a policy statement on its Web site. The ICRC says it will only break its silence in extreme cases, such as when the condition of prisoners hasn't improved.
 
Guantanamo inmate claims beheading of Daniel Pearl

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2362742.ece

I said a lot more to Andrew Buncombe who I met at a court proceeding in the Sibel Edmonds case in DC several years ago. In the end as is usually the case, it was only the above short statement he included in his piece. Buncombe was one of the only members of the corporate press reporting on what the government was doing with, and to, Sibel Edmonds. - Kyle Hence

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published:^16 March 2007

Among more than 30 attacks and plots allegedly confessed to by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the man long accused of organising the September 11 hijackings - was the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl.

It emerged yesterday that the Pentagon had held back a portion of a 26-page transcript of a legal hearing at Guantanamo Bay in which Mohammed claimed he had personally murdered the Wall Street Journal reporter in 2002. The Pentagon said it had done so in order to have time to warn the journalist's family.

In the transcript, Mohammed told the tribunal: "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the internet holding his head."

In all, according to the transcript - impossible to confirm because both the media and lawyers were refused entry to the hearing - Mohammed took responsibility for 31 attacks and plots around the world. Thousands of people died as a result of some of them though others never went beyond the planning stages.

He placed himself at the centre of the September 11 al-Qa'ida attacks on New York and Washington, claiming he was "responsible for the 9/11 operation from A-Z", the attacks on a nightclub in Bali as well as previously undisclosed assassination attempts on former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and Pope John Paul II. He also claimed responsibility for plots to attack Heathrow.

If genuine, the transcript provides the first public comments from Mr Mohammed since he was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and passed to US authorities. In his remarks, made in broken English, to a panel assessing his status as a so-called enemy combatant, he expressed regret that children were killed in the 11 September attacks. He said Islam did not provide a "green light" to killing.

Yet he insisted al-Qa'ida and its leader, Osama bin Laden, were fighting a just war. "As Americans consider George Washington a hero, Muslims, many of them, are considering Osama bin Laden. He is doing the same thing. He is just fighting. He needs his independence." It is unclear to what extent the US authorities believe Mohammed's claims but there was a suggestion that officials deem some to be boasts.

Others pointed out that much of what Mohammed, known as KSM, claimed was already known. Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the official commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks told US News & World Report: "I don't see anything new in what I have read about the 9/11 attacks and KSM's role."

Campaigners questioned the conditions under which Mohammed made his testimony. The transcript refers to a claim that he was tortured by the CIA but also says that he is speaking without "duress".

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told the Associated Press that it was impossible to know "unless there is an independent hearing".

Others questioned why the military had not released a recording of the hearing. Kyle Hence of the group 9/11 CitizensWatch said: "There is too much secrecy in the military tribunal process. In light of the many discrepancies surrounding the capture of KSM, and the fact that we have only seen two photos of the man since 2003 and not a single clip of video, the media should demand photos and video of the so-called mastermind of 9/11."
 
Court order in Khalid Sheikh case

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6576897.stm

By Syed Shoaib Hasan
BBC News, Karachi
4/20/2007

A Pakistani court has ordered the government to locate three missing relatives of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The order was given in the city of Karachi in response to a petition filed by Mr Mohammed's Karachi-based sister which alleges state harassment.

US officials say Mr Mohammed has admitted a role in the 9/11 bombings.

They say that he has also admitted kidnapping and murdering the US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.

'Detained or tortured'
He is currently in Guantanamo Bay and has been named by President Bush as one of the top al-Qaeda suspects to be held in prison.

"Every male member of the family has been detained or tortured by the state agencies," says advocate Ghulam Qadir Jatoi, who is representing the family.

He says they are being tortured so that Mr Mohammed's sister will drop her petition.

It was filed in the Sindh High Court and seeks to ascertain the whereabouts of missing male members of Mr Mohammed's family.

It states that all are Pakistani citizens, and certified residents of the province of Balochistan.

The three have gone missing since Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's arrest in February 2003.

The petition claims that they are all in state custody.

A Sindh assistant attorney general represented the government in court.

He was ordered either to produce the men at the next hearing or give an explanation as to their whereabouts.

The Pakistani government stated in earlier replies to the petition that the state had not arrested Mr Mohammed, nor had any knowledge of his whereabouts.
 
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