'9/11 plotter' planned Big Ben blast
Updated on 15 March 2007
The alleged mastermind of the September 11 terror attacks on the US has claimed he also wanted blow up Big Ben.
A dramatic confession to thousands of murders - in a secret hearing at Guantanamo Bay.
The man said to be the number three in al-Qaida's command said he planned 31 separate acts of terror around the world. They include the attrocities of 9/11, the Bali bombing and the the 2002 attack on an hotel in Mombassa.
But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also revealed other plots: a desire to target London landmarks like Heathrow Airport and Big Ben, and to assassinate former American Presidents.
So is this the real truth behind one of the world's most dangerous men - or pure fabrication?
'I was the operational director for Bin Laden for the organising, planning, follow-up and execution of the 9/11 operation.'Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Khalild Sheihk Mohammed, al-Qaida's number three in command, speaks out for the first time since his detention four years ago, laying claim to some of the world's most heinous attacks and a death toll of over 3,000 innocent people.
The atrocities of 11 September come at to the top of his obscene list of crimes.
"When I said I'm not happy that 3,000 been killed in America, I feel sorry even. I don't like to kill children and the kids. Never Islam are give me green light to kill peoples... But there are exception or rule when you are killing people in Iraq."
Further down the list, claims that he was behind Richard Reid's attempt to blow up a transatlantic flight with explosives in his shoes.
As well as the 9/11 attacks and the shoe bomber operation, he claims to be responsible for 31 separate al-Qaida plots dating back to 1993, when he says he was behind the bombing of the World Trade Center.
In 2002 he says he plotted both the Bali Bombing, in which 202 were killed, and the attack on an Israeli hotel at Mombassa.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claims responsibility for:
- The 9/11 attacks that destroyed New York's World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000
- The 1993 truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center that killed six people and wounded more than 1,000
- The October 12, 2002 bombings of two nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia, which killed 202
- The 2002 bomb attack on the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel on the Kenyan coast, which killed at least 14. A simultaneous, failed missile attack on an Israeli airliner leaving nearby Mombasa airport
- The attempt to down two US passenger airplanes using shoe bombs.
- A plan to bomb and destroy the Panama Canal
- Surveying and financing for the assassination of several former American presidents, including Jimmy Carter
- A plot to destroy Heathrow Airport, the Canary Wharf Building and Big Ben
- Shared responsibility for plots to assassinate Pope John Paul in the Philippines and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
Just as sobering are his claims to have planned further atrocities around the world that never took place. He details a second wave of attacks after 9/11 on US skyscrapers, and plots to bomb London's Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben.
There were further claims of assassinations. Mohammed detailed how he decapitated American journalist Daniel Pearl himself while in Karachi in 2002, and how he had plotted to kill Presidents Carter and Clinton and Pope John Paul II in the Philippines in 1995.
The timing of the release of these transcripts is, of course, convenient for President Bush because today a Pentagon report admits some of what's happening in Iraq is, in fact, a civil war.
