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Joe Joe is offline
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 3,698
Default Mass Murder Suspect #2

Peter..Do you think he might just be the wrong guy snatched from an
airport?

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (Arabic: خالد شيخ Ù…Ø*مد; also
transliterated as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, and
other ways) (b. March 1, 1964 or April 14, 1965) is the
Pakistani-Kuwaiti mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the
World Trade Center towers in New York. Until his capture in Pakistan in
2003, he was a very important figure in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda
organization, where he masterminded numerous plans and came to head the
group's propaganda operations sometime around 1999. Recent word has
surfaced that he was one of the head conspirators in a 2002 West Coast
Plot to attack the U.S. Bank Tower, the tallest building in Los
Angeles, this time taking recruits from al-Qaeda's Southeast Asian
wing, Jemaah Islamiyah, to avoid suspicion.

The 9/11 Commission Report calls him "the principal architect of the
9/11 attacks" and states that "By his own account, Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his
experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent
disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." The report also
calls him a "terrorist entrepreneur" who — though he had engaged in
planning terrorist attacks since his first such plot in 1994 — did
not join al-Qaeda until late 1998 or early 1999. He also reportedly
helped finance his nephew Ramzi Yousef's 1993 World Trade Center
bombing and conspired with him to create the foiled Operation Bojinka
plot. For his role in this Bojinka plot, Mohammed was indicted in the
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in
January 1996. That indictment subsequently led to his October 10, 2001
placement on the initial list of the FBI's top 22 Most Wanted
Terrorists, which was released to the public by President Bush.

Terrorist activity
By his own account, it was disagreements with U.S. policy toward Israel
that angered Mohammed. He began to support terrorist actions against
the U.S. starting with a small role supporting the World Trade Center
bombing of 1993. After he learned in 1991 or 1992 that his nephew,
Ramzi Yousef, was planning to launch a bomb attack, Mohammed gave him
advice and assistance over the phone, and kept track of Yousef's
progress. On November 3, 1992, he wired $660 to Yousef's
co-conspirator, Mohammed Salameh, to help complete the bombing
operation. Because of this, U.S. authorities began to investigate
Mohammed after the bombing was carried out.

After seeing the respect that Yousef had gained from the attack,
Mohammed decided to engage more directly in anti-U.S. activities as
well. He travelled to the Philippines in 1994 to work with Yousef on
Operation Bojinka, a Manila-based plot to destroy twelve commercial
airliners flying routes between the United States, East Asia, and
Southeast Asia. The 9/11 Commission Report says in Chapter 5 that "this
marked the first time KSM took part in the actual planning of a
terrorist operation."

In December, 1994, Ramzi Yousef had engaged in a test of a bomb on
Philippine Airlines Flight 434 using only about 10 percent of the
explosives that were to be used in each of the bombs to be planted on
United States airliners. The test resulted in the death of a Japanese
national on board a flight from the Philippines to Japan. Mohammed
conspired with Ramzi Yousef on the plot until it was uncovered on
January 6, 1995. Yousef was captured February 7 of that same year.
Mohammed had also developed a plot to assassinate U.S. President Bill
Clinton during his presidential visit to Manila in November 1994.

By the time the Operation Bojinka plot was discovered, Mohammed was
already safely in Qatar, back at his job as a project engineer at the
country's Ministry of Electricity and Water. He traveled in 1995 to
Sudan, Yemen, Malaysia, and Brazil to visit elements of the worldwide
jihadist community, although no evidence connects him to specific
terrorist actions in any of those locations. On his trip to Sudan he
attempted to meet with Osama Bin Laden, who was at the time living
there with the aid of Sudanese political leader Hassan al Turabi. After
a request to arrest KSM came to the Qatari government from the United
States in January 1996, Mohammed fled to Afghanistan, where he renewed
his relationship with Rasul Sayyaf and formed a working relationship
with the newly migrated Osama bin Laden later that year. "According to
KSM, this was the first time he had seen Bin Laden since 1989. Although
they had fought together [in Afghanistan] in 1987, Bin Laden and KSM
did not yet enjoy an especially close working relationship."

Just as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was reestablishing himself in
Afghanistan, Bin Laden and his colleagues were also transplanting their
operations to the same country. Abu Hafs al-Masri/Mohammed Atef, Bin
Laden's chief of operations, arranged a meeting between Bin Laden and
KSM in Tora Bora sometime in mid-1996, in which KSM outlined a plan
that would eventually become the quadruple hijackings of 2001. Bin
Laden urged KSM to become a full-fledged member of Al Qaeda, but he
continued to refuse such a commitment until around early 1999, after
the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam convinced
him that Bin Laden was truly committed to attacking the United States.
Mohammed wished to retain some degree of autonomy as a mujahid. His
continuing relationship with Abu Sayyaf — an opponent of the Taliban
— had to be kept hidden from Bin Laden and the rest of Al Qaeda, as
full disclosure would have been problematic.

The 9/11 Commission Report notes on page 149 that KSM moved his family
from Iran to Karachi, Pakistan in 1997. That same year, he attempted
without success to join mujahideen leader Ibn al Khattab in Chechnya,
another area of special interest to KSM. He was apparently unable to
travel to Chechnya, and so he instead returned to Afghanistan, where he
gradually gained stature in Al Qaeda and ultimately accepted Bin
Laden's invitation to move to Kandahar and join the organization as a
full-fledged member (although he claims that he still refused to swear
a formal oath of loyalty to Bin Laden). Eventually, he became leader of
Al Qaeda's media committee. He also worked on various unfulfilled plans
for attacks in Israel and Southeast Asia.

In 1996, he was secretly indicted by the Southern District of the state
of New York for his alleged involvement in Operation Bojinka.

Mohammed's cousin, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, was one of the major financers
of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Mohammed is also a suspect in the April 2002 bombing on the historic
El-Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba, Tunisia, which killed 14
Germans, five Tunisians and two French citizens.

thats just the basic info..more he

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Shaikh_Mohammed

Joe