The Sydney Morning Herald, March 16, 2007 - 6:25AM
'I beheaded US journalist': Bali bomb mastermind
Al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said he beheaded journalist Daniel
Pearl "with my blessed right hand," according to previously censored passages of a
military hearing transcript released today.
[PHOTO: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has confessed to plotting the September 11,
2001 attacks. Photo: AFP]
Mohammed confessed to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and
more than two dozen other attacks and plots in the same closed-door hearing on
March 10 at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But Mohammed's personal role in killing Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter whose
videotaped beheading in February 2002 shocked the world, was deleted from the
transcript until his family had been notified, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan
Whitman.
"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl,
in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed said in a statement he wrote and which
was read to the hearing by a military officer representing him.
"For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the internet holding
his head," he said.
In an oral statement, Mohammed said Pearl's beheading was not an al-Qaeda
operation.
"It's like beheading Daniel Pearl," he said. "It's not related to al-Qaeda. It was shared
in Pakistani. Other group, Mujahideen."
AFP
Copyright © 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald.
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