The List
The BBC reports:
The alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has admitted his role in them, and 30 other terror plots around the world, in a hearing at Guantanamo Bay, the Pentagon has said
That is a list of thirty-one counts of planned, attempted and/or accomplished acts of terrorism in all parts of the world. These include the bombing of the World Trade Center both in 1993 and 2001, the night club bombing in Bali, and a suicide bomber who struck a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya. Plans that he has admitted to participate in include attacks on several buildings in the US: landmarks and financial centres such as the Empire State Building (NY), Sears Tower (Chicago), Plaza Bank (Washington State) and the New York Sock Exchange. Outside of the US targets included Heathrow Airport, NATO headquarters and the Panama Canal.
All these targets, and many, many more, were included in a list read by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s ‘Personal Representative’ (read: us military officer assigned to the case). And in no uncertain terms Mohammed admits to having written the text read at the hearing:
PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE: [Reading]”Also hereby admit and affirm without duress that I was a responsible participant, principle planner, trainer, financer.”
DETAINEE: For this is not necessary as I responsible, responsible. But with in these things in responsible participant in finances.
PRESIDENT: I understand. I want to be clear, though, is you that were the author of that document.
DETAINEE: That’s right.
PRESIDENT: That it is true?
DETAINEE: That’s true.
PRESIDENT: Alright. You may continue with your statement.
That is to say – this is the unclassified version: and with only minor omissions as well. I wonder what kind of ‘persuasion’ was needed to get Mohammad to type out the list. I hear Guantanamo prisoners are ‘persuaded’ on a more or less regular basis.
And now that they have The List, I wonder how long it takes before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is found dangling from the ceiling of his cell in Guantanamo Bay…
2 comments:
On a different note: after reading the transcript of the hearing (the unclassified part of it that can be found on the BBC site), I can understand how this man has gotten to rise in the ranks of Al Qaida. Even in somewhat broken English the man knows how to use words to his advantage. I can only guess what he would sound like in his mother tongue.
Fanaticism in the mouth of a gifted speaker has lead to many a death in the past, and history has a sad habit of repeating itself
Although I agree with the last sentence, I believe that the speakers (however gifted) would be far less atrocious without a receptive audience. I fear more their determined loyalists who put fanatical words into action with the help of the labile masses. In the shadows of Hitler and Lenin there were people like Heydrich and Yezhov, deathly grey eminence that acted behind the scenes without a lot of rigmarole...
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