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Author Topic: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Says He Beheaded Reporter  (Read 5383 times)
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nonesuche
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« on: March 15, 2007, 03:21:10 PM »

Is anyone appalled? I am, such pride in his statement regarding Daniel Pearl and more pain for his beloved family as a result.

Alleged September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has taken responsibility "from A to Z" for the 2001 terrorist attacks, also said he beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, according to reports Thursday.

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," said a Pentagon transcript of Saturday's hearing, according to CNN. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the internet holding his head."

Mohammed revealed his role in the slaying of the journalist during a hearing at the US prison Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The transcript was released on Wednesday but the portion on Pearl was withheld until Thursday pending the notification of the reporter's family.

Pearl was abducted in January 2002 while on assignment in Pakistan. His body was later found and a videotape appeared showing his execution.

The 26-page document, which removed significant passages to protect what the Pentagon said was classified information, quotes a written statement in which Mohammed claims to have been behind major terrorist attacks since 1993 and more than 20 additional, unexecuted plots.

"I was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center operation. I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," he said in the statement, read by an unidentified personal representative assigned by the US Defence Department to assist him in the Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing.

"I was responsible for the shoe bomber operation to down two American airplanes. ... I was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia."

Mohammed was captured in 2003. He was believed to have been held by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at secret prisons around the world until being brought to Guantanamo in September.

The transcript was from a hearing held Saturday to determine if Mohammed is an enemy combatant, a definition created by the United States for prisoners in the so-called war on terrorism.

Guantanamo inmates were mostly captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan after the US-led invasion in late 2001 that toppled the Taliban regime in Kabul. Washington argues that the detainees cannot qualify as prisoners of war because they were not fighting for a legal, uniformed army, but that they need not be tried criminally because they were captured on the battlefield.

During the hearing Mohammed conceded that he fits the US definition of an enemy combatant, a category that did not exist before the September 11 attacks.

During one exchange with the tribunal's presiding office, Mohammed denied allegations that he told a reporter from the Arabic broadcaster al-Jazeera that he was head of the military committee of al-Qaeda, the terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden.

"I'm not denying that I'm an enemy combatant about this war," Mohammed said, according to the transcript.

The Pentagon says that the transcript is verbatim except for redacted sections.

The presiding officer, a US Navy captain whose name was redacted, acknowledged that Mohammed had made "a written statement regarding certain treatment that you claim to have received at the hands of agents of the United States government as you indicated from the time of your capture in 2003 up until before coming here to Guantamo in September 2006."

"To use your word, you claim torture," the captain said later.

Mohammed alleged that the torture came from "CIA peoples." He said it occurred "at the beginning when they transferred me..." but the rest of the statement was redacted by Pentagon officials.

Mohammed said in his lengthy statement of responsibility that he had made it at Guantanamo "without duress," and that he has sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden "to conduct jihad." He admitted to being a "member of the al-Qaeda Council" and to have led the terrorist network's media operations, directed by bin Laden's highest lieutenant, Egyptian fugitive Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"I was the operational director for Sheikh Osama bin Laden for the organizing, planning, follow-up and execution of the 9/11 operation under the military commander Sheikh Abu Hafs al-Masri Subhi Abu Sittah," Mohammed said in the statement, which was read into the transcript by his representative.

He said that he trained the 9/11 hijackers.

"I hereby admit and affirm without duress that I was a responsible participant, principal planner, trainer, financier via the military council treasury, executor and or a personal participant" in attacks including the slaying of two US soldiers in Kuwait.

He said that he planned "new or second wave attacks" meant to follow September 11, which targeted sites in California, Chicago, Washington state and New York City, but were never carried out.

The list of unconsumated attack targets includes the Strait of Hormuz, the Panama Canal, British landmarks including Big Ben and Heathrow Airport, Western-frequented nightclubs in Thailand, the New York Stock Exchange, and US or Israeli embassies in Indonesia, Australia, Japan, India, Azerbaijan and the Philippines, among other sites.

© 2007 DPA

http://www.playfuls.com/news_10_19271-ROUNDUP-Khalid-Sheikh-Mohammed-Says-He-Beheaded-Reporter.html
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Bobo2
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« Reply #1 on: March 15, 2007, 03:51:13 PM »

Yes, I am appalled.  And we worry about civil rights for this animal?
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justinsmama
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« Reply #2 on: March 15, 2007, 06:30:04 PM »

His punishment should be beheading as he did to Daniel Pearl (and no doubt others). Not a quick behaeding. Slow and painful.
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nonesuche
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« Reply #3 on: March 15, 2007, 07:51:33 PM »

Well there is much debate regarding whether he did this or not, this is a piece from Time and note the mention of the Brookings Institute, the most liberal think-tank in the country's take on this:

Can KSM's Confession Be Believed?
Thursday, Mar. 15, 2007 By ADAM ZAGORIN/WASHINGTON

Little in the just released confession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the presumed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, is new. The U.S. government long ago cataloged those alleged crimes based on extensive interrogations of Mohammed and other prisoners held in the CIA's controversial and now liquidated overseas prisons. But the transcripts of Mohammed's hearing — part of proceedings that began last Friday at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — are the first time the U.S. government has made publicly available his personal description of a stunning range of terrorist plots he claims to have had a hand in. These include both the 1993 and 2001 assaults on the World Trade Center, as well as the beheading of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Mohammed boasts he had complete or partial participation in 29 terror plots, some of which were never carried out.

As the transcript portrays him, Mohammed spoke with a meandering elocution before three military officials, with no lawyer but an air force officer by his side serving as a "personal adviser." He came across as an earnest, somewhat chatty mass murderer taking credit for plans to detonate the Panama Canal as well as New York City landmarks like the stock exchange. He also mentions assassination plots directed at former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton as well as Pope John Paul II. Several of the conspiracies he cited, notably the one involving President Carter, have not previously been disclosed.

Are Mohammed's claims to be believed? He has long been described — notably in The 9/11 Commission Report — as prone to exaggeration and self-aggrandizement, fond of portraying himself as a "superterrorist." The notes to the Commission's conclusions mention the possibility of Mohammed "inflating his own role." He may also be attempting to defend his part in the 9/11 planning against the testimony of other terror suspects. The Commission's notes indicate that, according to another terror chieftain, Abu Zubaydah, Mohammed originally offered Osama bin Laden a more modest proposal for attacking the U.S., but that bin Laden reportedly berated him, saying "Why do you use an ax when you can use a bulldozer?" What's more, Mohammed has also used disinformation in the past. He admitted under previous interrogation that a list of 30 supposed U.S. targets, which he circulated shortly after 9/11, was a lie to exaggerate the scale of al-Qaeda's planning. Terrorism experts say that though there is no doubt Mohammed played a major role in planning 9/11, he's famous among interrogators for his braggadocio. "He has nothing else in life but to be remembered as a famous terrorist," says Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institute and a 29-year veteran of the CIA. "He wants to promote his own importance. It's been a problem since he was captured," says Reidel, who went on to say he wouldn't be surprised is Mohammed was exaggerating his role in other plots.

At one point in the transcript, Mohammed compares himself to revolutionaries like George Washington, and concedes that he is an "enemy combatant," his formal U.S. designation and a status that restricts his legal rights. If the British had arrested him during the Revolutionary War, Mohammed said, "for sure they would consider him enemy combatant." One of the ostensible reasons for the current Guantanamo hearings is to determine whether Mohammed and others can be held there indefinitely as "enemy combatants" prior to facing military tribunals that could sentence them death. The hearings at Guantanamo will process 14 "high-value" prisoners brought to Cuba last year shortly before President Bush announced the shut-down of the CIA's overseas secret prisons.

At another point in the transcript, Mohammed expressed regret for the deaths caused on 9/11, particularly those of children, noting, "I'm not happy that 3,000 been killed in America... I feel sorry even. I don't like to kill children and the kids." He added, "The language of war is victims."

The Pentagon also issued transcripts of hearings held for two other prisoners: Abu Faraj al-Libi, a Libyan who reputedly organized two bombings in Pakistan in December 2003 aimed at killing President Pervez Musharraf; and Ramzi Binalshibh, who is suspected of helping plan the 9/11 attacks as well as a failed scheme to crash planes into London's Heathrow Airport. Mohammed, who was captured in Pakistan in 2003, was the only one of the alleged terrorists to attend his own hearing. Al-Libi and Binalshibh refused to do so.

The hearings at Guantanamo, formally known as Combatant Status Review Tribunals, are being conducted without press to avoid the risk of releasing sensitive or classified information. The transcripts released yesterday were heavily redacted. Given that all the prisoners have been in U.S. custody for years, however, many critics believe that the U.S. wants to suppress details of the prisoners' interrogation, which could involve torture, or other mistreatment. Nevertheless, in his transcript, Mohammed alleges that he had been tortured.

The U.S. has also fought to keep secret the locations of CIA secret prisons where the prisoners including Mohammed were held for fear that any disclosure would greatly embarrass U.S. allies. Press reports have suggested that secret prisons were located in Poland, Thailand, Morocco, Jordan and other locations. Some 385 men are currently being held at Guantanamo; a hunger strike purportedly involving several dozen detainees protesting the conditions of their confinement has been going on for weeks, and possibly since January.

At a time when the Bush Administration is facing stiff criticism in a variety of domestic scandals as well as for its conduct of the Iraq war, Mohammed's confession has quickly become a focus of cable TV and other media coverage, a reminder of America's ongoing battle against international terrorism. But the attention focused on Mohammed, thought to be al-Qaeda's third-ranking leader, also underscores the fact that the terrorist organization's chief, Osama bin Laden, and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain at large at a time when their former Taliban protectors in Afghanistan are resurgent. With reporting by Brian Bennett/Washington

 http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1599423,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner

I might guess this is just one more partisan example of "sunshine week" for the media to force greater transparency from our government, but honestly I think getting to the truth should be the goal - of course often that process is quite painful.

For what KSM said regarding Pearl is worth a good measure of punishment alone IMO
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LouiseVargas
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« Reply #4 on: March 16, 2007, 01:06:13 AM »

As far as I know, Daniel Pearl was the first American Journalist to be kidnapped and beheaded. He was the NYT's Karachi, Pakistan Bureau Chief. It was shocking beyond belief. The first time the world saw such a thing.



I bought his book "At Home in the World" which was composed of his collected writings from The Wall Street Journal. My favorite story was about the Persian Rugs. I bought Mariane Pearls' book "A Mighty Heart."

Did you know that Daniel Pearl was a very accomplished classical violinist?  Although he studied diligently, he loved bluegrass the best because he did not have to follow rules. I attended the first annual Daniel Pearl Music Festival in Encino and saw/his parents speak.
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Anna
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« Reply #5 on: March 16, 2007, 01:07:25 AM »

Interesting that his claim of torture says it happened early on and yet this confession came months later.  Note the Brookings Institute doesn't have any problem believing that part, lol, just his grocery list of all these things he has allegedly done.

And yes, those beheadings do show a slow sawing kind of beheading, not like a guillotine or sword, complete with the victim's screams.  He knows full well he is perfectly safe from any such thing happening to him.  Oh, I wish we would surprise a few of these creeps and make the punishment fit the crime.

Imagine their surprise because they are counting on our lack of resolve and inability to endure anything unpleasant.

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nonesuche
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« Reply #6 on: March 16, 2007, 10:10:08 AM »

Louise,

That warms my heart to hear you heard his parents speak and had such an interest in his life and ending tragedy. I think he seemed to be an interesting and diverse man, it is such a loss for the world to lose one so talented as he.

Anna,

I cannot imagine what Daniel endured in his last moments, heaven help us all to even ponder what pain he endured. I did notice that most of the news talking heads last night had the exact same impression as we have, that the boasting of KBM regarding this beheading, also as you say coming months post his accusation of torture is what's so disgusting. He is clearly proud of it and I simply cannot understand nor tolerate any religion that feels murder is not a horrible sin.
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