Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Prosecution Exhibit from the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (Arabic: خالد شيخ محمد; also transliterated as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, et al., commonly referred to as "KSM" and also known by as many as twenty-seven aliases (b. March 1, 1964 or April 14, 1965) is a prisoner in U.S. custody for alleged acts of terrorism. Formerly a Pakistani-Kuwaiti member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, according to the 9/11 Commission Report he was "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks." He is also thought to have had a role in many of the most significant terrorist plots over the last twenty years, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, and the murder of Daniel Pearl. He was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003 by the Pakistani ISI, possibly in a joint action with agents of the American Federal Bureau of Investigation, and has been in U.S. custody since that time.

Mohammed is thought to have been born in the Baluchistan region of Pakistan, and spent some of his formative years in Kuwait. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood at age 16 and returned to Pakistan soon after, studied in the United States for several years, and left for Afghanistan in the 1980s where he and his brothers fought for the CIA against the Soviet Union during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He is thought to have commenced anti-American terrorist operations in the early 1990s.

Until his capture in Pakistan in 2003, he was an important figure in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, where he came to head the group's propaganda operations sometime around 1999. He was indicted on terrorism charges in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in January 1996 and was subsequently placed on the October 10, 2001 list of the FBI's twenty-two Most Wanted Terrorists. In September 2006, the U.S. government announced it had moved Mohammed from a secret prison to the facility at Guantanamo Bay.

Early life

Mohammed is usually reported to have been born in the Baluchistan region of Pakistan. He spent some of his formative years in Kuwait, just like his nephew, Ramzi Yousef (three years his junior). He joined the Muslim Brotherhood at age 16. He returned to Pakistan soon after, and after spending some time there, went to the United States for further study.

He attended Chowan College, a small Baptist school in Murfreesboro, North Carolina, for a few years (beginning in 1983) before transferring to the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and completing a degree in mechanical engineering in 1986[?]. The following year he went to Afghanistan where he and his brothers, Zahed, Abed, and Aref, fought for the CIA against the Soviet Union during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (Some sources believe Khalid was fighting in Afghanistan before he moved to the United States.) There, he was introduced to Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, head of the Islamic Union Party. The 9/11 Commission Report notes on page 149 that "Sayyaf was close to Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance." Mohammed became Sayyaf's principal student. He fought the Soviets for three months.

Abed Mohammed died in a bomb blast in Peshawar in 1989. Zahed disappeared, his whereabouts still officially unknown. No information is currently available about Aref.

Professional career

After the Afghan jihad, Mohammed worked for an electronics company, working on communications equipment. In 1988, he helped to head a non-governmental organization paid for by Sayyaf, which sponsored and aided Afghan fighters against the Soviets. He continued this work until 1992, when he fought with Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Herzegovina and supported this effort financially.

Next, Mohammed moved to Qatar to work in a government office as a project engineer for the Qatari Ministry of Electricity and Water. He stayed at this job until 1996, all the while supporting terrorism covertly. He took many long vacations to help train and organize terrorists around the world. In 1996 he fled to Pakistan to avoid capture by U.S. authorities.

Private life

While he was in the Philippines in late 1994 and early 1995, he said that he was a Saudi or a Qatari plywood exporter named Abdul Majid. He had parties with alcohol and spent lavish times with Manila women. He often went to go-go bars and karaoke clubs and held meetings at expensive hotels. He reportedly gave large tips. He is widely reported to have buzzed a tower with a rented helicopter to impress a female dentist who was one of his girlfriends. He called her on a cell phone while buzzing the tower, telling her to wave.

At the time, Mohammed was staying at a lavish apartment across the street from a person who would become the President of the Philippines. He would often take trips to places such as Brazil to promote Konsojaya, a Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia based company that was secretly funding militant Muslims, including Yousef and Mohammed, in Southeast Asia.

According to Philippine police, a waitress at the Manila Bay Club on Roxas Boulevard in Pasay City named Arminda Costudio was introduced to Mohammed, who was using the name Salem Ali and claiming that he was a Qatari businessman. Costudio said that he was always with Ramzi Yousef, and her description was identical to Abdul Hakim Murad's description. Both people described that he had "excess meat" on his middle finger. Neither knew him under his true name. Costudio met him again twice at the Shangri-La Hotel in Makati City in mid-1994. Each time, he wore a white tuxedo and paid for dinner with a wad of cash. He gave out candies to group members. Costudio became the girlfriend of Wali Khan Amin Shah while he was in Metro Manila. Mohammed had a girlfriend, Rose Masquera, who worked at a Quezon City bar.

Mohammed went on scuba trips to Puerto Galera with Yousef. The trips may have been a cover to train Abu Sayyaf militants.

Terrorist activity

Some American government sources have called him the "Forrest Gump of terrorism" or "Forrest Gump of al-Qaeda" because of his involvement in so many Islamic militant plans dating from 1994, including the reported financing of his nephew Ramzi Yousef's 1993 World Trade Center bombing, conspiracy in the Operation Bojinka plot, a 2002 West Coast Plot to attack Los Angeles' tallest building, the U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, the murder of Daniel Pearl, and the 9/11 attacks.

World Trade Center bombing, 1993

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Ramzi Yousef is KSM's Nephew

Main article: World Trade Center bombing

By his own account, it was disagreements with U.S. policy toward Israel that angered Mohammed. He began to support terrorist actions against the U.S. starting with a small role supporting the World Trade Center bombing of 1993. After he learned in 1991 or 1992 that his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, was planning to launch a bomb attack, Mohammed gave him advice and assistance over the phone, and kept track of Yousef's progress.

According to Mohammed, KSM and Yousef had many telephone conversations in 1992 in which Yousef sought additional funding and reported his progress. Mohammed gave Yousef advice and tips over the phone, and funded his co-conspirator, Mohammed Salameh with a $660 wire transfer. This wire transfer ultimately began the U.S. authorities investigation into Mohammed's activities.

Operation Bojinka

Main article: Operation Bojinka

After seeing the respect that Yousef had gained from the attack, Mohammed decided to engage more directly in anti-U.S. activities as well. He travelled to the Philippines in 1994 to work with Yousef on Operation Bojinka, a Manila-based plot to destroy twelve commercial airliners flying routes between the United States, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. The 9/11 Commission Report says in Chapter 5 that "this marked the first time KSM took part in the actual planning of a terrorist operation."

"Using airline timetables, Mohammed and Yousef devised a scheme whereby five men could, in a single day, board 12 flights — two each for three of the men, three each for the other two — assemble and deposit their bombs and exit the planes, leaving timers to ignite the bombs up to several days afterward. By the time the bombs exploded, the men would be far away and far from reasonable suspicion. The math was simple: 12 flights with at least 400 people per flight. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 deaths. It would be a day of glory for them, calamity for the Americans they supposed would fill the aircraft."

In December, 1994, Ramzi Yousef had engaged in a test of a bomb on Philippine Airlines Flight 434 using only about 10 percent of the explosives that were to be used in each of the bombs to be planted on United States airliners. The test resulted in the death of a Japanese national on board a flight from the Philippines to Japan. Mohammed conspired with Ramzi Yousef on the plot until it was uncovered on January 6, 1995. Yousef was captured February 7 of that same year. Mohammed had also developed a plot to assassinate U.S. President Bill Clinton during his presidential visit to Manila in November 1994.

In 1996, Mohammed was secretly indicted by the Southern District of the state of New York for his alleged involvement in Operation Bojinka.

Redevelops relationship with Osama Bin Laden

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Osama Bin Ladin recruited KSM to plan and organize the 9/11 Hijackings and the Bali Bombings

By the time the Operation Bojinka plot was discovered, Mohammed was already safely in Qatar, back at his job as a project engineer at the country's Ministry of Electricity and Water. He traveled in 1995 to Sudan, Yemen, Malaysia, and Brazil to visit elements of the worldwide jihadist community, although no evidence connects him to specific terrorist actions in any of those locations. On his trip to Sudan he attempted to meet with Osama Bin Laden, who was at the time living there with the aid of Sudanese political leader Hassan al Turabi. After a request to arrest KSM came to the Qatari government from the United States in January 1996, Mohammed fled to Afghanistan, where he renewed his relationship with Rasul Sayyaf and formed a working relationship with the newly migrated Osama bin Laden later that year. "According to KSM, this was the first time he had seen Bin Laden since 1989. Although they had fought together [in Afghanistan] in 1987, Bin Laden and KSM did not yet enjoy an especially close working relationship."

Just as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was reestablishing himself in Afghanistan, Bin Laden and his colleagues were also transplanting their operations to the same country. Abu Hafs al-Masri/Mohammed Atef, Bin Laden's chief of operations, arranged a meeting between Bin Laden and KSM in Tora Bora sometime in mid-1996, in which KSM outlined a plan that would eventually become the quadruple hijackings of 2001. Bin Laden urged KSM to become a full-fledged member of Al Qaeda, but he continued to refuse such a commitment until around early 1999, after the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam convinced him that Bin Laden was truly committed to attacking the United States. Mohammed wished to retain some degree of autonomy as a mujahid. His continuing relationship with Abu Sayyaf — an opponent of the Taliban — had to be kept hidden from Bin Laden and the rest of Al Qaeda, as full disclosure would have been problematic.

The 9/11 Commission Report notes on page 149 that KSM moved his family from Iran to Karachi, Pakistan in 1997. That same year, he attempted without success to join mujahideen leader Ibn al Khattab in Chechnya, another area of special interest to KSM. He was apparently unable to travel to Chechnya, and so he instead returned to Afghanistan, where he gradually gained stature in Al Qaeda and ultimately accepted Bin Laden's invitation to move to Kandahar and join the organization as a full-fledged member (although he claims that he still refused to swear a formal oath of loyalty to Bin Laden). Eventually, he became leader of Al Qaeda's media committee. He also worked on various unfulfilled plans for attacks in Israel and Southeast Asia.

9/11 Attacks

Mohamed Atta a 9/11 hijacker, met with KSM in 1999-2000

Interrogations of Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (captured in 2002 and 2003 respectively) allegedly revealed that Khalid Mohammed was the instigator and prime organizer of the attacks. Mohammed's cousin, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, was one of the major financers of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The first hijack plan that Mohammed presented to the leadership of al-Qaeda called for several airplanes on both east and west coasts to be hijacked and flown into targets. Mohammed's plan evolved from an earlier foiled plot known as Operation Bojinka which called for ten or more airliners to be bombed in mid-air or hijacked for use as missiles.

Reid "shoe bombing"

Main article: Richard Reid

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Richard Reid met with KSM for a Suicide Mission on American Airlines 63 because Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested prior to the 9/11 Hijackings,December 22, 2001

Daniel Pearl murder

Main article: Daniel Pearl

Daniel Pearl was Murdered by a group belonging to KSM.

Bali nightclub bombings

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Partner with Atta in 1999-2000

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Partner in the 2002 Bali Nightclub Bombings

Other suspected terrorist connections

Mohammed is also a suspect in the April 2002 bombing on the historic El-Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba, Tunisia, which killed 14 Germans, five Tunisians and two French citizens.

Capture

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Born	Unknown - Present Pakistan/Kuwait

On September 11, 2002, members of Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) variously claimed to have killed or captured Mohammed during a raid in Karachi which resulted in the capture of Ramzi Binalshibh. Some people have reported that Mohammed escaped, but that his family was captured.

On March 1, 2003, the ISI reported that they had captured him in a raid in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The raid was variously reported to be all-Pakistani, in the presence of the United States FBI, or a joint raid with the FBI. Following the report of the capture, some Pakistani officials say he was immediately transferred to US custody without extradition proceedings, while others said he remained in Pakistani custody. The raid took place at the home of Ahmed Abdul Qudoos, who was also reportedly arrested as an al-Qaida agent. Qudoos' family told media that Mohammed was not in the house, that Qudoos was disabled and had never been associated with al-Qaeda, and that the police conducting the raids did not ask for Mohammed. Other newspaper accounts said that former Taliban officials in Pakistan said that Mohammed was not captured and was still at large.

Mohammed has also been widely described as living a lavish lifestyle, even while he was on the run from the law. He travelled all over the world using false passports, and was very close to being captured by U.S. authorities on numerous occasions.

He was close to former Jemaah Islamiyah leader Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali.

On October 12, 2004, Human Rights Watch reported that 11 suspects, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, had "disappeared" to a semisecret prison in Jordan, and might have been tortured there under the direction of the CIA. Jordanian and American officials have denied those allegations. He has allegedly been subjected to the waterboarding interrogation technique, and some have claimed that he withstood this extraordinarily effective form of psychological and physical torture for upwards of two minutes, a feat previously considered near-impossible. As of 2006, Mohammed has not yet stood trial.

External links

• Moussaoui Trial "Substitute for Testimony" from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. A summary of information KSM provided to his American interrogators.
• The Final 9/11 Commission Report. The Report focuses on KSM at the beginning of Chapter 5.
• A biography from Rotten.com
• Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: life of terror - an article from CNN
• An article from the National Review
• Top al-Qaeda suspect in US hands - news report from the BBC
• Is There More to the Capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Than Meets the Eye?, Center for Cooperative Research
• Bush Spells Out 'LA Terror Plot' - Feb 09 2006 report from the BBC