Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
A mastermind is what he is known for. The killing of thousands innocent civilizations in New York City on September 11th, 2001. His name is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was born in 1964 or 1965 making him about 50 years old today. Mohammed was born in the Baluchistan region of Pakistan and was raised in Kuwait. He is one of five siblings –four boys and one girl and both of his parents were religious people. His father has been dead for a while and was a preacher. His mother worked by cleaning women’s bodies for burial, which was a low paying job. He attended an all-boys high school and his teachers said they remembered him as a young boy who spent much time studying or doing his school work who took a liking into science. At the age of 16 he joined the Muslim Brotherhood.
In 1983 Mohammed came to the United States to continue his education to study engineering. He when to Chowan College, a small Baptist school in North Carolina before transferring to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. One of Mohammed’s teachers, who taught chemistry, talk about him. He said that there was nothing unusual about Mohammed, except that he was one that always scored the highest in the class. He said that Mohammed had no reason to become a radical or to kill people or plan the attacks on Sept. 11. He treated Mohammed and the other people from the Middle East like everyone else. Mohammed later transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. He graduated from North Carolina University in December of 1986 with a degree in mechanical engineering.
In the late 1980’s after he graduated he went to Afghanistan to resist the Soviet invasions. He then joined the mujahideen forces. In 1993 he got married and moved his family to Qatar. He had two sons, which were later taken into custody by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency in 2002. He worked as a project engineer in the Qatari Ministry of Electricity and Water. Then he began to travel to different countries afterwards.
After this he began an anti-American terrorist operations. His claims for becoming and anti-U.S. terrorist because of his anger with American support for Israel. He played a small part in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing with his nephew, Ramzi Yousef. Mohammed found his calling as a terrorist and was plotting multiple acts of murder including the assassination of Pope John Paul II and a failed plot to assassinate President Clinton in 1994. His first terrorist plan was Operation Bojinka. The Bojinka Operation plot was to destroy twelve commercial airlines flying between the United States, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. The plans were to crash a plane with explosives on board into the CIA headquarters. The plan was later discover by an apartment fire on January 6th, 1995 when the police found evidence of the plot. This plan was a large-scale attack on airlines in 1995, precursor to the 9/11 attacks. After the discovery of Operation Bojinka Mohammed returned back to Qatar and his job as a project engineer before he was caught.
He traveled again in 1995 to jihadist communities worldwide and no evidence connects him to terrorist action in any of the countries he visited. On one of his travels he went to Sudan and attempted to meet with Osama bin Laden. In 1996 he was able to meet with bin Laden and the two developed a working relationship. At the time they met Mohammed and bin Laden were both moving their terrorist operations to Afghanistan. Bin Laden’s chief of operations arranged a meeting between bin Laden and Khalid in mid-1996. This meeting Mohammed outlined a plan that would eventually become the hijackings of September 11th. In 1997 Mohammed got involved with al Qaeda and later he joined al Qaeda as a full member. He became the leader of al Qaeda’s media committee and worked on plans for mate attacks in Asia and Israel.
In late 1998 or early 1999 bin Laden gave approval for Mohammed to organize the plot for attack that is later known as 9/11 attacks. Meetings began to happen in 1999 as bin Laden provided the financial support and selection the participants such as the lead hijacker. Mohammed provided the operational support, such as selecting targets and helping arrange travel for the hijackers. The places that were targets were the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, the perceived source of U.S. policy in support of Israel, and The White House as bin Laden considered it a political symbol and wanted to attack it as well. Mohammed is told to be the mastermind behind everything that happened on 9/11 and is responsible for it from A to Z.
On March 1, 2003 in Pakistan by the Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) that was possibly with the CIA’s Special Activities Division and officers of the American Diplomatic Security Service. Mohammed had been in U.S. custody since March 1st, 2003 at a secret CIA camp or black site, in Poland. While in Poland he was waterboarded and then was later transferred to a camp in Romania. In September 2006 the U.S. government said that Mohammed will be moved from a secret CIA prison in Romania to the military custody at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, and Mohammed believe that the harsh interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, is an amount of torture. Today Mohammed is still being held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
I do not know much of the support America gave Israel in 1992, but there has to be more than just the support America for Israel for Mohammed to become an anti-U.S. terrorist. I also think that torturing Mohammed and his sons is not the answer to getting information out of them. The interrogators could have had a different approach to this situation besides torturing them. Mohammed claimed to be giving false information just to stop the torture. So they could be following fake claims that he gave them just so the torturing would stop. They might as well just kill him because he won’t be telling the truth or is not talking at all. If Mohammed is the mastermind why wasn't he killed and bin Laden was if he wasn't the mastermind behind everything that happened on 9/11.
Comments
Excellent job!! The US support of Israel is a very complicated thing that infuriates many Muslim people in the Middle East. To them it is a huuuuge problem.