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from VOA
IN THE NEWS - March 8, 2003:

Arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

07 March 2003
This is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program, In the News.

Last Saturday, Pakistani and American intelligence officials arrested a top al-Qaeda leader. They seized Khalid Shaikh Mohammed at a home in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

American officials took the al-Qaida operations chief for questioning somewhere outside Pakistan.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is third in the organization, behind Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri. American officials have connected Mister Mohammed to al Qaeda groups in Asia, Europe and the United States.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is believed to have planned the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September eleventh, two-thousand-one. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon killed three-thousand people. Mister Mohammed spent time with some of the September eleventh hijackers and has taken credit for organizing the attacks.

Officials also have linked him to other attacks and plots. One is the nineteen-ninety-three bombing of the World Trade Center. Another is a failed plot two years later to destroy eleven American passenger planes over the Pacific Ocean.

Mister Mohammed has also been linked to the bombing in Bali last year, and the bombing of a Jewish holy place in Tunisia. And experts on al Qaeda say he ordered the killing early last year of American reporter Daniel Pearl.

The American State Department offered twenty-five-million dollars for information leading to the arrest of Mister Mohammed.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had almost been captured last week in Quetta, Pakistan. Officials there arrested a suspected al-Qaeda member, but said Mister Mohammed had escaped. Officials say they used the captured suspect to locate him. They found Mister Mohammed at the home of Ahmed Abdul Qadoos. Mister Qadoos is a member of Jamaat Islami, Pakistan’s largest religious political party.

Officials identified a third man arrested as a Saudi named Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi. He is believed to have paid some of the September eleventh hijackers.

The United States made attempts to seize Mister Mohammed after the September eleventh attacks. Intelligence officials said they continued to receive information about him from his ongoing communication with al-Qaeda members around the world.

In recent weeks, officials are said to have gotten useful information about his activities from captured suspects. Intelligence officials said they learned that Mister Mohammed was planning attacks on bridges, fuel stations and hotels in New York and Washington.

That information led the Bush administration to raise the terrorism danger level in the United States last month. The danger level was reduced last week, the day before the arrest of Mister Mohammed.

American officials said the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed could lead to others, possibly including Osama bin Laden. But they said they are concerned that the arrest could also lead to more al Qaeda violence.

This VOA Special English program, In the News, was written by Cynthia Kirk. This is Steve Ember.

AND THEN FAST FORWARD TO MARCH 14, 2007…………FROM VOA

Alleged Terror Plotter Confesses to Planning Attacks

By VOA News
15 March 2007The U.S. Defense Department has released the transcript of a military hearing in which the alleged mastermind of the September 11th, 2001, attacks on the United States confesses to the attack.

In the transcript released Wednesday, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said he is “responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z.” He also confessed, during his closed-door hearing at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to planning 29 other major al-Qaida attacks.

A military officer representing Mohammed read his confession at the hearing, but the transcript indicated Mohammed was present.

The Pakistani national said he was involved in a 1993 attack on New York’s World Trade Center, the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, and an attempt to down American airplanes using shoe bombs.

The hearing is to determine whether Mohammed and 13 other prisoners meet U.S. authorities’ definition of an enemy combatant, and can be kept in custody for another year.

Citing security concerns, the Defense Department has barred reporters from covering the tribunals for Mohammed and several others who were transferred to Guantanamo Bay last year from secret U.S. prisons elsewhere.

Human rights and civil liberty groups, foreign governments and some U.S. politicians have condemned the secrecy of the tribunals and the legal process at Guantanamo, saying detainees are not provided with sufficient rights or legal representation.

Some information for this report provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

Report on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed at Wizbang

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