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U.S. officials worry most about Mohammed's U.S. recruits. Most were Egyptian-born American citizens, some of whom had easy access to the U.S. military.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed
Age: 37
Affiliation: Al Qaida
Whereabouts: Pakistan
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Mohammed's nephew was convicted as the chief organizer of the 1993 World
Trade Center bombing. His older brother is regarded as a key member of Al
Qaida. Yet another brother was killed during a bomb blast in Pakistan
connected to Al Qaida.
The man widely regarded as mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, was captured Saturday in a raid in Pakistan involving U.S. agents, officials told Associated Press. Mohammed had a price on his head. The United States was offering up to $25 million for information leading to his capture.
Rather, Mohammed has been linked to a 1995 terrorist plot to bomb or hijack
airliners bound from Asia to the United States. Therein may lie the key to the Sept. 11 conspiracy.
Mohammed is regarded as a core member of Al Qaida, whose
importance has grown in the wake of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan that
destroyed the group's infrastructure. The core group is believed to consist
of about a dozen members, include Osama Bin Laden, his deputy Ayman
Zawahiri, Mohammed Abdul Rahman, the son of the blind sheik Omar Abdul
Rahman, regarded as the guide for the 1993 WTC attack and other terrorist
plots.
Mohammed might hate the United States but he has a lot to thank this
country for. Born in Kuwait to a Pakistani mother, Mohammed left the
sheikdom for the United States as a young student in the early 1980s. He
studied in North Carolina and received a degree in engineering. One
school he is believed to have attended is Chowan College in
Murfreesboro, N.C.
When he completed his education, Mohammed, at the urging of his older
brother, Zayed, embarked on his career in jihad. By 1989, he was in
Afghanistan where he joined Saudi fugitive Osama Bin Laden and his
Taliban protectors to fight the Soviets. The United States helped the
Taliban effort although it is not known whether the CIA maintained links to
Mohammed.
By 1992, the world had changed. The Soviet Union was out of Afghanistan,
Kuwait was conquered by Iraq and then liberated. Mohammed decided to stay in
Afghanistan and join Bin Laden's campaign against America.
At first, Mohammed was not a marked man. He kept a low profile as he
worked with his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade
Center. Under the guidance of his brother and nephew, Mohammed graduated to
become what intelligence analysts term a third-tier Al Qaida operative. His
forte was logistics and recruitment.
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A federal agent said Ramzi Yousef, Mohammed's nephew, expressed regret that more people had not died in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and said he had hoped the bomb would cause one of the two towers to fall on its twin, killing at least 250,000 Americans.
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Two years later, Mohammed and Yousef returned to plan a series of
attacks on airliners leaving from Pakistan and other Asian countries to the
United States. The plot was foiled and Yousef, who assembled the bombs, was
captured in Pakistan and extradited to the United States, where he is now
serving a life sentence. Mohammed escaped arrest.
U.S. officials believe Mohammed is the link between the 1993 bombing of
the World Trade Center and the skyscraper's destruction eight years later.
They said Al Qaida regarded the 1993 bombing as a technical failure and had
planned to try again to destroy the twin towers. Mohammed was said to have
helped organize the mission to hijack passenger jets and crash them into the
World Trade Center.
Today, Mohammed is believed to be part of a small group of Al Qaida
survivors who have embarked on a strategy for post 9/11. The strategy calls
for the launching of tactical terrorist strikes in U.S.-backed regimes
already racked by unrest in an attempt to overthrow them. They include
Algeria, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Tunisia. Mohammed's expertise is
Pakistan and he could have been involved in the Al Qaida car bombing of the
U.S. consulate in Karachi last June 14.
In the meantime, U.S. officials said, Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman
Zawahiri are planning a major attack meant to top 9/11.
U.S. officials believed Mohammed was roaming the lawless Afghan-Pakistani
border. What they were most concerned about was the connections Mohammed has
maintained with Islamic insurgents in the United States. Almost all of the
people that he and Yousef recruited were Egyptian-born American citizens,
some of whom had easy access to the U.S. military.
