Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

U.S. says a captive admits 'Cole' attack

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 20, 2007

WASHINGTON - A Yemeni portrayed as an al-Qaida operative and a member of a terrorist family confessed to plotting the bombings of the USS Cole and two U.S. embassies in Africa, killing hundreds, according to a Pentagon transcript of a Guantanamo Bay hearing.

The transcript released Monday was the fourth from the hearings the military is holding in private for 14 "high-value" terror suspects who were kept in secret CIA prisons before they were sent to the U.S. facility in Cuba last fall.

Last week, Waleed bin Attash said he helped plan the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people, according to the transcript. He also said he helped organize the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in which suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the guided-missile destroyer, killing 17 sailors.

"I participated in the buying or purchasing of the explosives," bin Attash said when asked what his role was in the attacks.

Also alleged to have been Osama bin Laden's bodyguard at one time, bin Attash is in his late 20s and is a Yemeni who was born in Saudi Arabia, authorities have said. He was captured in 2003.

U.S. intelligence documents allege that bin Attash is a "scion of a prominent terrorist family" that includes his father, Mohammed, who was close to bin Laden, and younger brother Hassan, who has been held at Guantanamo since 2004, arriving at the age of 17.

The release of bin Attash's transcript came five days after the Pentagon released transcripts of hearings for three other detainees at Guantanamo, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who claimed responsibility or partial responsibility for nearly three dozen plots including the 9/11 attacks.

The hearings are being held to determine whether the suspects should be declared "enemy combatants" who can be held indefinitely and prosecuted by military tribunals.

[Last modified March 20, 2007, 02:13:18]