Terrorist Planner 'Confesses'

Mar 19, 07:31 PM

Current Headlines: By MARTIN BENTHAM

Home Affairs Editor A TERRORIST long suspected of planning the bombing of the battleship USS Cole, in the Yemeni port of Aden, confessed to the attack during a hearing at Guantanamo Bay according to a US Defence Department transcript today.

Seventeen sailors were killed and 37 injured when suicide bombers steered an explosivesladen boat into the battleship on 12 October 2000. "I participated in the buying of the explosives," Walid Mohammad bin Attash said. "I put together the plan for the operation a year and a half prior to the operation."

Bin Attash, a Yemeni raised in Saudi Arabia, said he bought the boat and recruited the members that carried out the Cole bombing.

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