|
JANE CORBIN DAILY MAIL (London) March 3, 2003
The 37-year-old Kuwaiti-born fanatic was on the FBI's most-wanted list and had a GBP 16million U.S. government bounty on his head, the same amount President Bush has offered for Bin Laden. The Americans believe he has been in touch with the Al Qaeda leader recently and knows where he is. Intelligence suggests Khalid may have been planning an attack on Britain. Khalid was being held at a secret location last night, although it was not entirely clear under who's jurisdiction. Pakistan said he was being jointly interrogated by Pakistani and U.S. agents, denying earlier reports he had been 'handed over' to the Americans. But Jay Rockefeller, vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, claimed he was under 'American protection'. He told CNN news: 'This is huge. It's as big as Bin Laden. This guy is the brains and we took him down. He will be grilled by us. I'm sure we will be very tough with him.' Mr Bush described the arrest as 'fantastic'. Below, an author and expert on Al Qaeda examines Khalid's background and the implications of his arrest. A master of aliases and disguises, Khalid Sheik Mohammed has remained hidden in the shadows pulling the strings for Osama Bin Laden for more than a decade. The urbane Kuwaiti-born graduate of a U.S. engineering college, fluent in several languages, has adopted myriad identities, travelling all over the world to direct Al Qaeda's biggest terror spectaculars. He is believed to be the architect of the simultaneous hijackings that turned four passenger planes into deadly missiles on September 11. Time and again he escaped the net thrown round him until his luck ran out on Saturday. Today there is relief and a degree of jubilation among many western security agencies at the capture of 'the biggest fish so far'. Khalid has special significance for British intelligence. For, as the rising tide of 'chatter' in signals and human intelligence rose to a crescendo in recent months, there were indications that he was directly in charge of Al Qaeda's plans to target the UK. A chemical attack, a hit on Heathrow airport or the bombing of a skyscraper like London's Canary Wharf were all scenarios feared by the security forces. His cunning and his success with past operations made him an enemy to be reckoned with. Indeed, he was so clever at hiding his tracks that it was not until several months after September 11 that the identity of the real mastermind began to emerge when Bin Laden's head of recruitment, Abu Zubaydah, was captured and began talking.
|
The fugitive Khalid was known only to the Americans for his involvement in a past terror plan in the Philippines, which was not at that stage directly attributed to Al Qaeda. Operation Bojinka, a plan in 1995 to blow up U.S. airliners over the Pacific, was foiled, but the two main protagonists, Khalid and his nephew Ramsi Yousef, escaped when the chemical cocktail they were mixing set fire to their flat in Manila. For six years, Khalid was free to refine his ambition to use planes as terror weapons. I first came across his tracks in the United Arab Emirates, a few weeks after September 11, while researching the story for the BBC's Panorama. I was shown a Saudi passport featuring a deliberately fuzzy photograph and told it belonged to a mysterious Al Qaeda operative who used many false names. He would jet in to Dubai from neighbouring Qatar and use the glittering westernised city as the financial hub for the terror plot. I visited international banks and an anonymous back street Western Union money transfer office which he used to send thousands of dollars to Mohamed Atta, the leader of the hijackers, based in Florida. The money paid for flying lessons. Atta dutifully sent back the remaining balance just seven days before he flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Centre. Atta addressed the parcel to 'Almohtaram' (the respected one). Investigators now believe Al Qaeda's money man was none other than Khalid, who escaped from Dubai just before September 11. America's subsequent war against Afghanistan forced Al Qaeda's high command to split and its leaders fled. While Bin Laden and his deputy, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zowahiri, remained near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Khalid was left responsible for maintaining the terror network. His name was linked to fresh attacks: the bombing of a synagogue which killed 18 German tourists in Tunisia last April and the terror that engulfed the Sari nightclub in Bali in October. By now, Khalid was second only to Bin Laden on America's 'most wanted list' and had a GBP 16million bounty on his head. But yet again last September he eluded capture, this time in Karachi. He had been holed up with another fugitive, Ramsi bin al Shibh, a key member of Atta's Hamburg cell. The two were using computers and mobiles to stay in touch with their secret and far-flung terror networks. Khalid was tipped off, probably by sympathisers within Pakistan's security apparatus, just before government paramilitaries burst into the apartment. Western intelligence sources believe that Khalid then made his way to Iran and disappeared from view. But he was becoming too hot to handle and the Iranian authorities made it clear he was no longer welcome. He had no choice but to return to Pakistan, this time choosing the garrison town of Rawalpindi, close by the capital Islamabad and within easy reach of lawless north western tribal areas where Al Qaeda is still operating with impunity. His arrest is vital, because if anyone can shed light on Bin Laden's whereabouts, it is him. But will he talk and can his U.S. interrogators rely on what he says? Many people will urge that every means should be used to find out what he knows, even truth drugs. Moreover, just because he has been arrested does not mean that the danger of terrorist attacks has been diminished. There are persistent rumours of a major strike by Al Qaeda planned to coincide with any military action against Iraq. Bin Laden himself, in a new audio tape a few weeks ago, made it clear that he intends to capitalise on Moslem anger against America and Britain to win new recruits and establish himself as the only man standing strong against a new western imperialism. The players in a new Al Qaeda terror spectacular, one likely to have been planned by Khalid, could already be in place waiting to strike. The new captive holds the key to when and where - and who the victims might be.
Jane Corbin is author of The Base: In Search Of Al Qaeda, The Terror Network That Shook The World. |