Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) (1965?-) was the operational chief of the 9-11 attack and many other worldwide terrorist  plans and actions worldwide, ranking third or fourth in al-Qaeda. He was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on 1 March 2003, and is a U.S. High Value Detainee at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and has been charged with leadership of the 9-11 attack. On December 8, 2008, he and four codefendants offered to plead guilty, but did not continue when he was told he could not be executed without a jury trial; he had indicated he wanted to be a martyr.

Biographical
He was born in 1964 or 1965, and fought in the Afghanistan War (1978-92) between 1980 and 1989. He has been known as Ashraf Refaat Nabith Henin, Khalid Adbul Wadood, Salem Ali, Fahd Bin Adballah Bin Khalid, Abdulrahman A.A. Alghamdi, Mukhtar the Baluchi, Hashim Abdulrahman, Hashim Ahmed, Khalid al-Shaykh al-Ballushi,  Khalid Shaikh Muhammed, Khalid Shaykh Mohammad, Khaled Shaikh Mohammad, Khalid Shaykh Muhammed.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is believed to have been born in either 1964 or 1965 in Kuwait into a family originally from the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan. Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted in 1997 of bombing the World Trade Center four years earlier, is his nephew.

He graduated in 1986 from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in the US, and speaks Arabic, English, Urdu and Baluchi.

In the late 1980s he moved to Pakistan's north-western city of Peshawar, where he became acquainted with Bin Laden. He was reported to have been active in the Muslim Brotherhood, certainly by 1986.

Operation Bojinka
Before KSM was fully associated with al-Qaeda, he was involved in a Pacific operation was called Operation Bojinka, planned for 1996 but discovered in 1995, when the apartment he and his nephew Ramzi Yousef were using to make bombs caught fire. Yousef was later convicted for leading the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Airline attack plans with al-Qaeda
Between 1996 and 2001, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Osama bin Laden, and Mohammed Atef, the military commander of al Qaeda), proposed and discussed potential targets for attack by hijacked commercial airliners and decided to target economic, political, and military buildings in the United States and Western Pacific. In or about 1999, he requested and received funding, from al-Qaeda, for his idea of hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings., the "Planes Operation".

KSM, OBL, and Mohammed Atef developed an operational concept of attacks on airliners, using bombs in the Western Pacific and hijacked airlines against targets in the U.S. The U.S. part was known as the "Planes Operation", and, in planning, consisted of initial attacks on the East Coast (ie., the 9-11 attack) and a followup attack on the West Coast. It was eventually approved by bin Laden between November 1999 and February 2000.

KSM, in Karachi, Pakistan, was joined, in November 1999, by Khallad, Nawafal Hazmi. He taught them English commands needed for hijacking, and provided them with study materials on flying. He then funded Hazmi and al Midhar (a member of the American Airlines flight 77 team to travel to the U.S. to prepare the "Planes Operation."

In December 1999, he sent Khallad on a trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in order to assess airline security, collect information regarding air carriers for flights in Southeast Asia, and facilitate onward travel for Nawafal Hazmi (AA #77) and Khalid al Mihdhar from Kuala Lumpur to the United States.

When he returned, Khallad briefed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Mohammed Atef on his observations on airline security, including the ability to smuggle a razor knife (i.e., "box cutter") In or about January 2000, Usama bin Laden chose Ramzi Binalshibh, Mohammed Atta, Marwan al Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah to participate in the "Planes Operation" in the United States. When Ramzi Binalshibh was unable to obtain a visa to travel to the United States, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed named Binalshibh as his main assistant in the "Planes Operation" due to his knowledge ofthe details of the plot. Atta was selected as the "emir" ofthe group and Nawafal Hazmi was selected as Atta's "deputy." Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave Mohamed Atta (AA #11) full authority to make operational decisions in the United State

Between in or about September 2000 and in or about July 2001, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed instructed the non-pilot hijackers to travel to their home countries to obtain "clean" passports (a passport not reflecting travel to Pakistan or Afghanistan), visas from other Western countries, and visas to the United States, then return to Pakistan. Following the hijackers' return to Pakistan, he sent them to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to await final travel to the United States.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed personally trained the hijackers and informed them that they were going on a "martyrdom operation" involving airplanes, but at the time of their training they were not made aware of the specific targets. He and others trained the non-pilot hijackers by providing instructions on how to pack their bags to best secrete knives onto a plane, and on how to slit passengers' throats by making the hijackers practice on sheep, goats, and camels in preparation for the "Planes Operation."

Pakistan
Al Qaeda expert Rohan Gunaratna said Mohammed ordered the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. "Daniel Pearl was going in search of the al Qaeda network that was operational in Karachi, and it was at the instruction of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed that Daniel Pearl was killed." Reports conflict if he actually killed Pearl.

North Africa
The French magistrate Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere issued an arrest warrant for him in connection with a suicide bomb attack on a synagogue in the Tunisian resort island of Djerba in 2002.

Southeast Asia
In 1996, he was indicted in New York for his alleged involvement in a Philippines-based plot to blow up 12 U.S.-bound commercial airliners in 48 hours. The indictment has no legal bearing right now, U.S. government officials said; the priority is to interrogate him. And the Australians have been interested, because of their investigation into the Bali bombing in 2002 in which 202 people died. 

Capture and captivity
Mohammed, who held a Pakistani passport, was almost picked up last week in Quetta, Pakistan. Officials there arrested one suspected al Qaeda operative, but Mohammed escaped, according to highly placed Pakistan officials.

Officials then used the captured suspect to track Mohammed to a house in the middle-class suburb of Rawalpindi, nine miles southeast of Islamabad and home of Ahmed Abdul Qadoos, a member of Pakistan's largest religious political party, Jamaat Islami.

According to a Washington Post article, KSM was waterboarded 183 times starting in March 2003.

Legal proceedings
KSM, representing the "9/11 shura council", responded: