Today’s Miami Herald leads
Is Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, being held here?
Army Maj. Jeffrey Weir, a prison spokesman, would neither confirm nor deny whether Mohammed was being held in Gitmo. He went on to tease the press.
The answer, he said, will be available Friday in a raft of paperwork being released by the Pentagon.
Friday is when the Bush Administration must release Guantanamo Bay prisoners’ 2004-2005 status review hearings forms with the names appearing.
A captive facing conspiracy charges, when being questioned by the Military Commission judge, asked to be moved to a cell alongside the man known by his acronym “KSM.”
Speculation is that the monogram stands for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
We all remember that nearly three years ago to the day he was captured in Pakistan looking more like Rumpledstiltskin than a terrorist.
There’s no doubt KSM is a nasty piece of work. Witness this bit of his biography.
Mohammed also has been linked to the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000; Richard Reid’s foiled attempt to blow up an airliner with a shoe bomb in 2001; last April’s bombings at the El Ghriba synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia; and the Bali bombings in October. CNN, March 4, 2003
KSM has been a profligate stool pigeon, according to the Feds, and as reported in Time Magazine, beginning his singing career within two weeks of his capture.
Other high-level al-Qaeda detainees previously disclosed some of the names, but Mohammed, until recently al-Qaeda’s chief operating officer and the brains behind the 9/11 attacks, has volunteered new ones. He has also added crucial details to the descriptions of other suspects and filled in important gaps in what U.S. intelligence knows about al-Qaeda’s practices.
The hapless and electronically inept captive who spilled the beans regarding KSM is Yemeni, Ali Hamza al Bahlul, 37, who
. . .is charged with conspiracy to attack civilian targets and commit murder, and allegedly made al Qaeda recruiting videos, including one ”glorifying” the USS Cole attack in 2000.
He allegedly also served as Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard around the time of the 911 attacks, and, according to his charge sheet, unsuccessfully tried to arrange a satellite link as bin Laden fled Kandahar, Afghanistan, to watch news reports about the attack.
