Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (1 March 1964-) was the leader of al-Qaeda's proopaganda operations from 1999 to 2001 who was also responsible for several terrorist attacks, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 9/11 attacks of 11 September 2001, the Richard Reid shoe bombing plot of December 2001, the February 2002 killing of journalist Daniel Pearl, and the 2002 Bali bombings.
Biography[]
Terrorist plotter[]
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Afghanistan, November 1999
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was born on 1 March 1964 in Balochistan, Pakistan to a Sunni Baloch family. He spoke Arabic, English, Urdu, and Balochi, and grew up in Kuwait City, Kuwait. After graduating from high school in 1983, he enrolled in Chowan College in North Carolina, United States and went to school in America. During his time in America, he gained a hatred of the USA due to their support of Israel and was personally offended when he was thrown in jail because of unpaid debts. He saw America as a debauched and racist country, and decided to fight against them. In 1987, he left North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and headed to Peshawar, Pakistan to join the Mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan War. Mohammed attended Abdullah Azzam's Sada training camp and traveled across the Arab world, spending some time in Qatar, the Philippines, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He lived in Qatar to avoid capture by US authorities and Minister of Religious Affairs Abdullah al-Thani defended him from the Americans. In 1994, Mohammed planned the Bojinka Plot while in the Philippines, but after the Philippines Air Flight 434 bombing by his nephew Ramzi Yousef and the discovery of the plot on 6 January 1995, Mohammed was indicted on terrorism charges.
9/11[]
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2001
In 1995, he traveled to meet the jihadist communities of Sudan, Yemen, Malaysia, and Brazil, and in 1996 he fled to Afghanistan after the United States asked Qatar to arrest him. He met Osama Bin Laden there, and in 1997 he moved his family from Iran to the Pakistani city of Karachi. In 1999 he moved to Kandahar and became the media leader of Osama's al-Qaeda organization, and in 2000 he helped to plan out the 9/11 attacks of 11 September 2001. He chose Mohamed Atta as the leader of the hijackers, and he provided targets and travel support to the hijackers, effectively masterminding the plot. He chose to strike the US economy at the World Trade Center, their military at the Pentagon, and the US' relationship with Israel at the US capitol building or White House. Mohammed, codenamed "the Professor", made preparations for the "wedding", which would involve attacks on the "Faculty of Town Planning" (World Trade Center), "Faculty of Law" (White House), and the "Faculty of Fine Arts" (the Pentagon), and the "Faculty of Applied Sciences" (the Capitol). On 18 July 2001, he met with Mohamed Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Tarragona, Spain to discuss the attacks, just fourteen days after American officials began to report that a mass-casualty attack by al-Qaeda was coming soon, and that it was going to be big.
Capture and interrogation
After the US and United Kingdom's invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Mohammed remained in Pakistan, which became an al-Qaeda safe haven. Mohammed was personally responsible for beheading American Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl in February 2002 when he attempted to uncover the al-Qaeda ring in Karachi, and pictures on the internet showed him holding Pearl's head. On 1 March 2003 he was captured by Pakistani ISI, the US Diplomatic Secret Service, and the CIA in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He was held in various US prisons including one in Afghanistan (Cobalt), a black site in Poland, and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He was subject to waterboarding, slapped, grabbed in the face, placed in stress positions, forced to stand in sleep deprivation (seven and a half days), subject to water being slowly dropped into his rectum, and kept naked for more than a month while being interrogated by female handlers. Information gathered from him included details about 9/11 hijackers, spreadsheets showing financial assistance to al-Qaeda families, a list of killed and wounded al-Qaedans, and other key data. He was kept in Guantanamo Bay for years, awaiting prosecution.