Practically 20 years later, he and two accomplices have reached a take care of prosecutors.
Washington:
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 hijackings — the deadliest ever assaults on US soil — has devoted his life to plotting in opposition to the West.
Considered one in all Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s most trusted and clever lieutenants, Mohammed, also referred to as “KSM,” was captured in Pakistan in March 2003.
He then spent three years in secret CIA prisons earlier than arriving in 2006 on the US navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Practically 20 years later, he and two accomplices have reached a take care of prosecutors, the Pentagon stated Wednesday, which can reportedly see them keep away from a loss of life penalty trial.
Mohammed was often known as “mukhtar” (the chosen one) or “the mind” in extremist circles, however mocked as “KFC” for his love of fried rooster, biographers say.
An “boastful,” “very proud” man of small stature, Mohammed additionally had a fame for being short-tempered.
Now round 60 years outdated, the educated engineer was concerned in a string of main plots in opposition to the USA, the place he attended college and attained an engineering diploma.
His deadliest was the 9/11 operation, which noticed almost 3,000 folks killed after hijacked planes rammed into the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, with one other crashing in a Pennsylvania subject.
He claims to have helped within the 1993 World Commerce Heart bombing that killed six folks and to have personally beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.
KSM was born within the mid-Sixties to a Pakistani household dwelling in Kuwait, however his roots lie in Baluchistan, a restive Pakistani area bordering Afghanistan.
He says he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, an anti-Zionist activist group, when he was 16, starting a life-long infatuation with violent jihad.
In 1983, Mohammed moved to the USA for his research and stayed with a “small group” of Arabs from Kuwait, biographer Richard Miniter instructed AFP.
“KSM’s restricted and unfavorable expertise in the USA — which included a short jail keep due to unpaid payments — virtually actually helped propel him on his path to turning into a terrorist,” a US intelligence abstract stated.
In 1987, he traveled to Afghanistan and fought alongside mujahedeen rebels in opposition to the Soviet invasion.
He stayed in Afghanistan till 1992, after which headed to Bosnia and Herzegovina to battle with Muslim fighters in opposition to the Serbs, in line with the 9/11 Fee report.
It was not till a botched 1995 plot to explode US airliners over the Pacific, often known as Operation Bojinka, that he achieved notoriety.
He had earlier helped finance the 1993 World Commerce Heart bombing hatched by his nephew Ramzi Youssef that killed six folks and wounded greater than 1,000 others.
Mohammed fought alongside Bin Laden in Afghanistan within the late Eighties, however they didn’t forge an in depth relationship till 10 years later, at which level Mohammed started plotting what would later grow to be the September 11, 2001 assaults.
“Bin Laden realized that this troublesome little man was completely important for turning AQ into the type of group he wished,” Miniter stated.
Mohammed then had a hand in almost each single Al-Qaeda plot till his arrest. However consultants say it’s not doable that one man alone was on the heart of all these terror plans.
“He is clearly a sensible man, however he isn’t a genius… He did not do the unimaginable,” stated Terry McDermott, co-author of “The Hunt for KSM.”
Most of what’s recognized about Mohammed comes from interrogation transcripts launched by the Pentagon.
He’s recognized to have been waterboarded 183 instances throughout his years in US custody.
Rights teams denounce the simulated drowning approach as torture, and it later led to years of delays in his trial resulting from authorized manoeuverings.
In reported confessions, Mohammed claimed to be the “navy operational commander” for all Al-Qaeda overseas operations, saying, “I am not making myself a hero.”
“I am seeking to be a martyr for a very long time,” he instructed a listening to at Guantanamo in June 2008, the primary time he had appeared in public since his arrest.
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(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
