Where in the World is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
There was a cheer of applause heard in state capitals and homes of ordinary folk around the world as the week began: al-Qaeda terrorist leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been captured by Pakistani authorities with the assistance of US intelligence operatives.
In an interview last year with Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language television network, Mohammed claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks -- he planned them and organized them. He is often referred to as Number Three along with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in leading what remains of al-Qaeda after it’s dispersal following the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan last year.
But what’s disturbing in the reports surrounding the fates of these three men, and al-Qaeda itself, is in an attempt to demonize the enemy the US administration and the news media in general (who love a big story) might be making more of these folks than they are. This is not to discount the incredible planning and resources that went into the horror of 9/11 and other events. It’s not to say we must not be vigilant and prudent and on guard. It’s not to say that those responsible ought not to be tracked down and tried.
But the way the story of Mohammed’s capture has been reported raises questions.
Writing from London, a New York Times correspondent reported the 37 year-old Kuwaiti native was chief of operations for al-Qaeda and had been captured in a pre-dawn raid Saturday at a home in the Pakistan city of Rawalpindi. Quoting "American and foreign intelligence officials", hundreds of previously captured al-Qaeda operatives had fingered Mohammed as leader and "acknowledged during debriefings that they had had a recent conversation with Mr. Mohammed". But apparently while they all knew Mohammed, few of these captured operatives knew each other.
The report goes on to quote unnamed intelligence sources filling out the biography of Mohammed (also known as Muktar Balucci). Whereas Osama bin Laden was noted as al-Qaeda's symbolic leader, Mohammed is considered the "details man". "He was at the center of everything," a senior American law enforcement official said today. Many al-Qaeda operatives "will be lost without him."
It appears the story came entirely from unnamed military and intelligence sources; everything reported was at least third hand and unproven.
Nonetheless, the Republican Senator from Kansas, Pat Roberts (Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee), called Mohammed a "big fish". Roberts, on one of the Sunday morning political news programs said, "If there was one person that we wanted to get, it was this man."
The White House was reported to be jubilant and US President George Bush was awoken in the early morning to be told the good news. He exclaimed: "Fantastic!".
And Pakistani authorities, possibly anxious to stay in the good graces of US foreign and trade policy, announced the arrests "triumphantly".
Meanwhile the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Congressman Peter Goss from Florida, was even more ecstatic. He characterized the arrest of Mohammed as "the equivalent of the liberation of Paris in the Second World War". He went on to say tell CNN it was "certainly not permissible" to obtain any information from Mohammed through torture. "The hallmark of our country is decency, democracy, freedom and so forth. The other guys don't," Goss said. "But we have to maintain our standards."
Another New York Times reporter, this one actually in Rawalpindi and who supplied pictures of the driveway of the neat upper middle class suburban home in the fashionable Westridge neighbourhood which was raided on Saturday, mainly rewrote intelligence briefings as well. He did talk to one of the arrested men’s sisters. The home where Mohammed was seized is owned by the elderly parents of Pakistani Ahmed Qadoos, 42, who is also now in custody. He lived there with his wife and children and parents. An unidentified Middle Eastern man was also arrested. The interview with Qadoo's sister, with two of his children at his side, suggests Qadoos had been duped by mastermind Mohammed. She said her brother still lived with his parents because he is "slow, of below-average intelligence," did not pass junior high school and is unable to hold a job.
The headline on one NBC website blared "US OFFICIALS MAKE HUGE ARREST IN THE WAR ON TERROR". The story went on to report Mohammed was arrested at 3 am, on his birthday, was fluent in English because he'd spent years at North Carolina's A&T University as an engineer. (Not mentioned was the obvious fact that he lived there legally while going to school. He graduated with honours.) The same story reported "US agents are also analyzing computers and other material pulled from the scene of Mohammed's arrest -- all likely to be heavily encoded.” This may be the computer Qadoos sister says was recently purchased so her brother and young children could play video games.
Several reports said Mohammed "was quickly handed over to the Americans for questioning at an undisclosed foreign location". But was he? And should he have been? Was he charged with a crime in Pakistan? Which laws were broken? Was there an extradition hearing? Or an extradition request? We may all be safer if Mohammed and his ilk are out of the picture; but how much safer are we really if governments are allowed to seize people without due process and hand them over to a superpower?
Three days later, the confusion raged as to whether or not Pakistani or US authorities were currently holding and questioning Mohammed. The US said they had him. The Pakistanis said they had him. Several reports said he was on undisclosed foreign soil, no longer in Pakistan. Some said he was at Bagram Air Base, a US occupied facility in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat, talking to the BBC, insisted the US had not requested extradition and that, in any case, Mohammed would be turned over to Kuwait, if they wanted him. "We have no plans to hand him over to the Americans," the Interior Minister said Monday. Mohammed had not been charged with a crime in Pakistan and his visa appeared legal. Possibly in an effort to make it clear the Pakistani government was not giving up its sovereignty to the US, Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Aziz Ahmad Khan said Mohammed had been arrested by ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and other security agencies; the FBI and CIA was not directly involved. However, US officials were busy praising US intelligence agents for being instrumental in locating Mohammed.
Confused yet?
Come to think of it, where in the world is Osama bin Laden?
Remember him? It’s been a year since CNN reported the dialysis treatment bin Laden was receiving for his kidney problems. Without a sterile medical environment, CNN said then, "it's unlikely that you'd survive beyond several days or a week at the most". Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf speculated 14 months ago that bin Laden was almost certainly dead then. No genuine evidence has surfaced to indicate he remains alive. But dead, without proof, he is harder to demonize; for some he is more valuable when thought to be alive and on the run, pulling strings behind the scenes.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell believes the other head of al-Qaeda, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, is in Iraq and said so in a speech to the UN recently. It was part of the US proof that Iraq and al-Qaeda are intimately linked. However, the terrorist al-Zawahiri had a leg amputated as a result of the fighting in Afghanistan so he isn’t likely to run far or fast. The Iraqis deny he is in their country.
Meanwhile Mohammed was arrested in cosy upscale Westridge in the middle of the night sound asleep. The neighbourhood is noted for its retirees, especially popular among the Pakistani military.
These are the three al-Qaeda leaders we so fear.
So where in world is the al-Qaeda leadership? Where is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? You pick: the US says in sole US custody not in Pakistan; Pakistan says he is in sole Pakistani custody and might be extradited to Kuwait; the UPI news agency reports he's at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
As if that isn’t enough, Robert Fisk, writing in Britain's newspaper The Independent, claims Mohammed is an ex-ISI employee (Pakistani intelligence - the same folks who arrested him in his sleep) -- a fact missed by the New York Times and other reporters. Is there any truth at all in any of this and if so what is it?
It may actually take some time to sort out.
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