Pentagon: Confession in Cole Blast

Mar 19, 04:19 PM

Current Headlines: By Carol Rosenberg, The Miami Herald

Mar. 19--A Yemeni captive at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has confessed to buying the speedboat and recruiting the suicide bombers who attacked the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, in 2000, killing 17 U.S. sailors, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon Monday.

The captive, Waleed Mohammed bin Attash, also admits in the document that he helped plan the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people, most of them Africans.

The military released the partially censored 10-page transcript of the hearing, held exactly a week ago -- as part of a process of certifying bin Attash as an "enemy combatant" at the remote U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

Certification is a necessary step in charging any of the 14 so-called high-value captives now at Guantanamo with war crimes. They were transferred to the Guantanamo prison camp from CIA custody six months ago.

When the White House announced bin Attash's transfer to Guantanamo in September, it issued a profile saying he was 27 and "the scion of a prominent terrorist family" and had only one leg, his left, due to "a battlefield accident in 1997."

His father was close to Osama bin Laden, and a brother has been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2004, a White House profile said.

The United States has long alleged that al Qaeda suicide bombers were responsible for the Oct. 12, 2000, attack on the destroyer, which also wounded 37 U.S. sailors.

Long before bin Attash's transfer, Pentagon officials had argued that they had Cole masterminds in custody.

But the transcript appears to be offering the first explicit, if brief, admission of a key organizational role.

Bin Attash, according to the transcript, made the confession in response to a question from a U.S. lieutenant colonel, either from the Air Force or Marines.

Lieutenant Colonel: "What exactly was his role as the -- both the USS Cole and the -- ah -- embassy thing?

Bin Attash: "Many roles. I participated in the buying or purchasing of the explosives. I put together the plan for the operation a year and a half prior to the operation. Buying the boat and recruiting the members that did the operation. Buying the explosives."

Lieutenant Colonel: "Nothing further."

Bin Attash's hearing was extremely brief, lasting only 33 minutes, including Arabic-English-Arabic translation, the reading of the unclassified version of allegations against him and various participants taking oaths.

It followed the typical military script of a so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunal, and included a few brief comments by bin Attash.

The transcript also contained numerous redactions, particularly of the names of other detainees whom bin Attash appeared to be fingering as co-conspirators.

In response to a follow-up question from the Navy captain running the hearing, bin Attash said he was with bin Laden in Kandahar, Afghanistan, at the time of the Cole attack.

He said he was in Karachi, Pakistan, at the time of the twin attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The White House has described bin Attash as born in Yemen and raised and educated in Saudi Arabia. It said two of his brothers were killed in U.S. airstrikes on Afghanistan in 2001, in reprisal for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

So far, the Pentagon has released redacted, unclassified transcripts of four of the 14 men who spent up to four years in secret CIA detention, being interrogated outside the rolls of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The most dramatic transcript, released last week, quoted alleged al Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed admitting to a list of 31 international terror plots -- from the Sept. 11 attack to personally beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Most of the 31 were not realized.

-----

To see more of The Miami Herald -- including its homes, jobs, cars and other classified listings -- or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.herald.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Miami Herald

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

DJ,