Washington – Transcripts show that suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl, according to a revised transcript released by the U.S. military.
“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” Mohammed is quoted as saying in a transcript of a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that was released Thursday by the Pentagon.
Mohammed’s claimed involvement in Pearl’s 2002 slaying was among 31 attacks and plots – some of which never occurred – he took responsibility for in a hearing Saturday at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Pentagon said.
It released the bulk of the transcript late Wednesday, but held back on the section about Pearl’s killing to allow time for his family to be notified, said department spokesman Bryan Whitman.
Mohammed portrayed himself as al-Qaida’s most ambitious operational planner in a confession to a U.S. military tribunal that said he planned and supported a series of terrorist attacks, topped by 9/11, that killed thousands of innocent victims since the early 1990s.
The gruesome attacks range from the suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001 – which killed nearly 3,000 – to a 2002 shooting on an island off Kuwait that killed a U.S. Marine, according to an account released by the Pentagon.
