It also fulfills a prisoners 'freedom' need and several others if relevant objects are placed. The Yard is room that can be built inside or outside that allows prisoners to exercise and socialize. If outdoor and near outer wall, contraband thrown over wall/fence,.During then-US president Bill Clinton’s visit to Manila in 1994, Khalid along with Yousef had also planned to assassinate him. He was also involved in the infiltration of a military exercise in Kuwait which killed a US marine and injured others. He also confessed his involvement in 30 other attacks during a hearing at the US naval prison in Guantanamo Bay. “For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head,” he added. “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” his statement released by the Pentagon read. Khalid also confessed to beheading Daniel Pearl, the South Asia bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, who was brutally murdered in Karachi, Pakistan in 2002. “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” he was quoted as saying. In a 26-page transcript released by the Pentagon in 2007, KSM claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. He formally joined al Qaeda in late 1998, and started devising a strategy for the 9/11 attacks.Īccording to the 9/11 Commission report, KSM helped in training the chosen operatives and collected information material for the plan, as well as facilitating travel. Unlike bin Laden, Khalid was also known for staying in luxury hotels and visited nightclubs in Manila. He also worked with Qatar’s ministry of electricity and water as a project engineer. Khalid also came in contact with Osama bin Laden for the first time during this period.īetween 19, Khalid helped run an organisation funded by Sayyaf, which aimed to aid young mujahideen. In 1987, Khalid visited Peshawar in Pakistan, where he was introduced to Afghan mujahid Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, head of Hizbulittihad El-Islam, who took on the role of mentor and provided him military training. He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina A&T State University in 1986. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 16 and later moved to the US. Khalid, also known as ‘KSM’, was born in either 1964 or 1965 to Pakistani parents in Kuwait and grew up in the Gulf state. In 2006, he was reportedly transferred to the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.Īlso read: Afghanistan’s fall is 9/11’s latest unlearned lesson Kuwait born, US-educated Khalid was seized by the CIA from Pakistan in 2003 and remained in secret detention for three years. However, the plan failed as fire broke out in the apartment where the conspirators were working. In 1995, Khalid was also named a co-conspirator of Operation Bojinka, a plan to blow up multiple international airliners over the Pacific, along with Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing. This is when he first caught the eye of the US security authorities. He was also involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, as he had transferred money to one of the accused. He is said to be the one who came up with the plan and proposed it to al Qaeda. Khalid came to be known as the ‘ principal architect‘ of the attacks, according to the 9/11 Commission which investigated them. The five conspirators, who have been locked up in a prison at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for 15 years, will appear in the military tribunal for the first time since early 2019.
New Delhi: As the United States gets set to mark 20 years of the 9/11 attacks this week, the trial of al Qaeda terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the ‘principal architect’ of the attacks, and four other alleged conspirators, resumes Tuesday.