Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

9/11, al Qaeda, Barack Obama, detainees, Gitmo, Guantanamo, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Military Commissions, New York Times, September 11, World Trade Center

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed plus 4 al Qaeda killers at Gitmo admit they planned September 11

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Anyone remember 9/11?

Anyone remember the World Trade Center?

Anyone remember the Pentagon?

Anyone remember the innocent aboard those four planes?

Someone will have to explain to my family and me what President Barack Obama meant when he said those at Guantanamo will receive, “Swift and certain justice,” why five barbarians were not allowed to plead guilty last year, and why this latest admission of guilt is not reason enough to let them plead guilty immediately at a Military Commission.

The New York Times reports:

The five detainees at Guantánamo Bay charged with planning the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have filed a document with the military commission at the United States naval base there expressing pride at their accomplishment and accepting full responsibility for the killing of nearly 3,000 people.

The document, which may be released publicly on Tuesday, uses the Arabic term for a consultative assembly in describing the five men as the “9/11 Shura Council,” and it says their actions were an offering to God, according to excerpts of the document that were read to a reporter by a government official who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The document is titled “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations,” the military judge at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp said in a separate filing, obtained by The New York Times, that describes the detainees’ document.

The document was filed on behalf of the five men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has described himself as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

President Obama halted the military proceedings at Guantánamo in the first days after his inauguration, and the five men’s case is on hiatus until the government decides how it will proceed.

Several of the men have earlier said in military commission proceedings at Guantánamo that they planned the 2001 attacks and that they sought martyrdom. The strategic goal of the five men in making the new filing, which reached the military court on March 5, was not clear.

In their filing, the men describe the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks and the killing of Americans as a model of Islamic action, and say the American government’s accusations cause them no shame, according to the excerpts read by the government official.

“To us,” the official continued reading, “they are not accusations. To us they are a badge of honor, which we carry with honor.”

Remember the 2,975 that were killed and bring “swift and certain justice” now to their murderers.

9/11, al Qaeda, Binyam Mohamed, detainees, dirty bomber, Gitmo, Guantanamo, Jose Padilla, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Osama bin Laden, WMD

Binyam Mohamed ‘False Martyr’: Thomas Joscelyn

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If you have only read British press reports about Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, what Thomas Joscelyn wrote about him this morning in The Weekly Standard will be news to you:

Mohamed was then reportedly introduced to top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. By early 2002, the two were traveling between al Qaeda safehouses. The U.S. government alleges that Mohamed then met Jose Padilla and two other plotters, both of whom are currently detained at Guantánamo, at a madrassa. Zubaydah and another top al Qaeda lieutenant, Abdul Hadi al Iraqi, allegedly directed the four of them “to receive training on building remote-controlled detonation devices for explosives.”

At some point, Padilla and Mohamed traveled to a guesthouse in Lahore, Pakistan, where they “reviewed instructions on a computer … on how to make an improvised ‘dirty bomb.'” To the extent that the allegations against Mohamed have gotten any real press, it is this one that has garnered the attention. Media accounts have often highlighted the fact that Padilla and Mohamed were once thought to be plotting a “dirty bomb” attack, but that the allegation was dropped, making it seem as if they were not really planning a strike on American soil.

Indeed, all of the charges against Mohamed were dropped last year at Guantánamo. But this does not mean that he is innocent. As some press accounts have noted, the charges were most likely dropped for procedural reasons and because of the controversy surrounding his detention. According to U.S. government files, Padilla and Mohamed were considering a variety of attack scenarios.

Zubaydah, Padilla, and Mohamed allegedly discussed the feasibility of the “dirty bomb plot.” But Zubaydah moved on to the possibility of “blowing up gas tankers and spraying people with cyanide in nightclubs.” Zubaydah, according to the government, stressed that the purpose of these attacks would be to help “free the prisoners in Cuba.” That is, Zubaydah wanted to use terrorist attacks to force the U.S. government to free the detainees at Guantánamo.

According to the summary-of-evidence memo prepared for Mohamed’s combatant status review tribunal at Guantánamo, Mohamed was an active participant in the plotting. He proposed “the idea of attacking subway trains in the United States.” But al Qaeda’s military chief, Saif al Adel, and the purported 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), had a different idea. Al Adel and KSM allegedly told Binyam that he and Padilla would target “high-rise apartment buildings that utilized natural gas for its heat and also targeting gas stations.” Padilla and Mohamed were supposed to rent an apartment and use the building’s natural gas “to detonate an explosion that would collapse all of the floors above.”

As Joscelyn also explains, Binyam Mohamed trained at al Farouq where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained. In addition, Osama bin Laden “lectured Binyam Mohamed and other trainees about the importance of conducting operations against the United States.”