KSM's statement for the trial of Abu Ghaith al Sulieman

From WikiAlpha
Jump to: navigation, search

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s statement in response to questions submitted by lawyers for Sulaiman Abu Ghayth

In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Praise be to Allah

To Whom It may Concern

I received the set of questions from the lawyer for Sulaiman Abu Ghayth (Allah preserve him) consisting of 34 pages and 451 questions. It reminded me of the interrogations at the Black Sites and the questions from the dirty team at Guantánamo.

I will not answer all of the questions because I have doubts about the goal behind some of them. Because of time constraints, the impending trial, and the fact that these questions — like all interrogation questions — are similar to one another and repeat the same question in a different way, I won’t constrain myself to the same format. My answers will be in paragraph form instead, covering most of the subjects.

I want to help my brother, Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghayth (Allah preserve him) but — as I have mentioned before to my attorney — only if the request comes from him and not from the lawyer. My answers are according to the best of my knowledge and beliefs about him.

I want to inform Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghayth’s lawyer that I suspect the U.S. government has a hand in these questions because they correspond precisely with the way the CIA and the FBI posed questions. I may be right or wrong in this assumption, but I feel that most of the questions do not serve the interests of his client or anyone for that matter; yet they are primarily directed to me. Therefore, he should know in advance that I will not agree to give any video or audio recorded testimony at the request of the government or the defense. These answers should suffice.

There are extensive areas about which I have no knowledge because of the nature of my work with Al-Qaeda during which I held many different positions during different periods of time and under different conditions. Therefore, my answers in these areas will be based upon my general knowledge.

For instance, in the case of all the questions about the training camps, I do not have any information on them during this period because I was appointed by Sheikh Osama bin Laden (Allah have mercy upon him) as head of operations abroad, meaning all the jihadist operations conducted outside of Afghanistan. It was administrative work consisting of receiving trained operators from the military officials such as Sheikh Abu Hafs Al-Masri or Sheikh Osama bin Laden (Allah have mercy upon them) without getting involved in training matters. The candidates for operations were sent to me and I had other means of training them apart from the well-known camps. I did not need the camps to prepare my men because of the nature of the special operations that were conducted outside Afghanistan.

My personal acquaintance with Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghayth

- He was an imam and the Friday sermon speaker at one of the mosques in Kuwait (to the best of my knowledge).

- He is a pious man and has memorized the Holy Qur’an in its entirety.

- Generally speaking, the Mujahideen respected all the Imams or Sheikhs and afforded them opportunities to give lectures at any time.

- I first came to know him through audiocassette tapes of Friday sermon prayers. These cassette tapes were widely distributed among the people and in Islamic libraries.

- He did not play any military role and to the best of my knowledge he did not receive any military training at any of the training camps for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

- I do not recall that I ever met him or saw him at a training camp considering my limited visits to the training camps during that period of time.

- He did not know me by any name other than the one I was using in Afghanistan (Mukhtar Al-Balushi) so he never knew my real name: Khalid Al-Shaikh or Khalid Shaikh Mohammad. I think that Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghayth (Allah preserve him) learned my real name through the media after my arrest, just as I learned real name of Abu Hafs Al-Masri (Allah have mercy upon him) through the media after he was killed. Allah only knows.

The relationship between Al-Qaeda and the government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda and the Arab Mujahideen who sacrificed their blood, souls, and money for the victory of the Afghan people were part of the people who partnered with them to defeat and expel the Russian forces in the previous war. The Mujahideen, regardless of their ethnic or organisational affiliation had their own activities, whether it be involvement with the military, charitable institutes, or relief organizations.

At that time, during that particular war, the U.S. government was against the Russian force for political and strategic reasons of their own. Thus they gave their proxies in the Arabian Peninsula countries the green light to flood the Afghan Mujahideen with money, resources, and Arab fighters; and they also opened the doors for merchants and businessmen to donate money without conditions or restrictions. The selfishness and stubbornness of Uncle Sam pushed the U.S. government to flood their agent, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (lSI), with millions or billions of dollars in order to defeat the Russian Army by supporting the Afghan Mujahideen. This indirect support was the principle cause of the development of the non-Afghan groups and organizations in Afghanistan and their ability to achieve what they desired without any security pressures imposed by U.S. allies such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other countries around the world. They never supported the non-Afghan groups directly with money or weapons, but by allowing absolute freedom for young people to spend their own money and take advantage of the open land contributed to attaining these achievements. In the end, Uncle Sam destroyed his own country by his own hand with his stupid foreign policy.

It was in this climate of complete inattention from the West that the groups in Afghanistan were able to develop their capabilities. The countries in the West were busy settling scores with the Russians and licking their chops over Mujahideen victories, and for the most part remained completely blind to what was happening in the camps and on the non-Afghan Mujahideen front.

When the Mujahideen prevailed and the Russians withdrew, the Americans awoke from their state of inattention; but it was too late. The American media had not yet used terms such as “foreign fighters” or “Afghan Arabs” or “terrorists” or even “the Afghan resistance”, rather the fixed term in the Western media policy at that time was “Mujahideen”. CNN, BBC, Reuters, France Press were all united in using the term “Jihad” to describe the Afghan resistance and “Mujahideen” to describe the fighters, whether Afghan or Arab, and the term “martyrs” for those among them who were killed.

All of this was to impart international legitimacy on the Western and Islamic support for the Mujahideen in an effort to limit the expansion of the Red Bear and prevent it from obtaining a warm-water port. At the time, Jihadist speeches were accepted and even supported and applauded by the West because they mirrored their strategic interests. Speeches by Sheikh Abdullah Azam or Sheikh Tamim Al-Adnani or addresses by Sheikh Osama bin Laden (Allah have mercy upon them) were accepted by the West. Every one of them was able to move freely from north to south and from east to west in the country.

If Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghayth (Allah preserve him) had given speeches at this time and collect money and incited people in mosques in New York or Brooklyn to go join the Jihad in Afghanistan to kill the Russians and the Afghan soldiers, no one would have prevented him or arrested him. In fact, they would have described him as a Mujahid and called him a hero. However, he was not part of that fabric and did not participate in Jihad at that time.

Western hypocrisy became apparent when these same Arab Mujahideen started supporting their Muslim brothers in Chechnya against Russian occupation or when they set off to Bosnia to help their Bosnian brothers prevail against the savage brutality of Serbian attacks.

It was then that the term changed from “Mujahid” to “terrorist” and from “Jihad” to “terrorism”. It was as if the Russians who occupied Afghanistan were not the same Russians who occupied Chechnya or support for the Bosnians was not the same as support for the Afghans. It was as if the charges of conspiracy, material support to terrorism, and killing civilians did not apply to killing Russians and Afghan soldiers and incurring civilian casualties in Afghanistan; but after the Russian defeat, they became charges affixed to anyone who practiced the same Jihad or self-defense or defense of the oppressed in a place or manner incompatible with Western strategic interests.

When the West under U.S. leadership had achieved its goals in Afghanistan, and the Russians had withdrawn leaving the Mujahideen victorious, they left behind them a mass of warring Afghan factions and focused on clearing the Arabs out of the area. Thus began a campaign of mass arrests and deportations to Pakistan.

But it was too late because some of the organizations had become a part of the Afghan people. As for Afghanistan itself, the West did not support the Afghan organizations in order to bring about peace, prosperity, and security in Afghanistan. The U.S. proxies in the lSI under American control foiled every attempt to reconcile or integrate the various Afghan organizations. Every time they saw a strong leader or an organization, they supported him in order to split his organization off from the others. They split the group Hezb Al-Islami Hekmatyar into two parties — one by the same name and one by the name Hezb Al-Islami Younis Khalis and so on.

All of that was done to ensure that even if the Mujahideen prevailed and expelled the Russians they would be left powerless and Afghanistan would remain dependent on Pakistan, India, Iran, or Tajikistan, just as the West desired. But when the pillaging, looting, killing, rape, and gang violence spread and security in Afghanistan disappeared, the people were compelled to revolt, and an appropriate movement for change emerged from the south of Kandahar. Thus the Taliban movement came on the scene and spread like wildfire. They did not meet any resistance from anyone as each Afghan province fell to them one after the other. The people welcomed them, having grown weary and desperate from the deteriorated security situation; and it was only a few months before they entered Kabul and declared an Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Security finally prevailed in the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, etc. to the extent that they become even more secure than American cities such as Chicago, New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles. The peace in which the people lived became almost engraved in the heart of each Afghan person and will never leave the memory of the Afghan people or the history of Afghanistan until judgment day. By the admission of the United Nations, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was able to stop drug cultivation in the entire country for the first time in over 200 years.

A traveler could travel from the south of the country from Jalalabad to Kabul then go west to Kandahar and turn north to Herat without being robbed. Moreover, shops and crowded markets did not close their doors during prayer times. A storeowner could safely leave his store open to go perform his prayers in the mosque, and he would come back knowing that nothing would be missing from his merchandise. Sometimes, he would find money left on the table by someone who purchased something and left. Such stories had spread in the Islamic world while the hypocrite West besieged Afghanistan from every side, preventing the Afghan airline from flying, and putting pressure on Pakistan to halt support and close the roads.

Even with all that, the price of cars in Afghanistan was three times cheaper than what they cost in Pakistan, and the fuel was much cheaper as well. The curiosity of some sheikhs, scholars, and other Muslims grew, prompting them to come to Afghanistan and confirm for themselves the glowing stories they had heard about the great turning point in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from a state of bandits, crime, killing, and narcotics to a state of security and peace.

That was a momentous turning point in the history of the Islamic movements since the fall of the Islamic Caliphate. It constituted a turnaround in which Islamic Sharia law would rule, far removed from subordination to colonial powers and without appeasing or making concessions to the secularists in the country. With total success in removing the differences between different nationalities and ethnicities, Afghanistan, under the leadership of the Emir of the Believers, Mullah Omar (Allah preserve him) was the first Islamic state that treated all Muslim men equally, whether they be Chinese, Indian, Chechnyan, Arabs, or Westerners. This prompted some Muslin scholars, preachers, and regular Muslims to travel to Afghanistan to confirm what was being told about this unique experience and to learn from it. Moreover, some moved with their families to live there and to escape the religious persecution they faced in their countries. They wanted to live in peace and observe their religious practices. An example of this was the Uighurs and people from Myanmar. Many also came from Iraq to escape Saddam, along with numerous people from other countries. Some even came from the West with their families to live in peace in a land governed by Islam.

Even though the existence of Jihadist groups and their camps predated the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the government did not bother them or their camps because they were associated with the Ministry of Defense and aided the state against the Northern Alliance. This is how complications arose for some analysts. Is every non-Afghan Arab Muslim a member of Al-Qaida? Or has everyone in Guantanamo fought against the Americans? The U.S. government intentionally fosters these misconceptions in order to achieve its goal. Many dignitaries visited Afghanistan including Sheikh Abdullah Al-Turki, the Saudi Minister of Islamic Endowments; Sheikh Yusif Al-Qardawi, head of the Islamic Scholars Association; the Grand Mufti of Egypt at the time, Sheikh Farid Wasil; the head of the Sharia courts in Qatar, Sheikh Thaqil Al-Shammari; Dr. Ali Al-Qaradaghi; the thinker Fahmi Huwaidi, and other scholars from Pakistan such as Al-Mawlawi Nizam Al-Deen Shamzi; the head of the Pakistani Council for Observing the Crescent, Al-Mawlawi Abdallah Ghazi; and his son, Al-Mawlawi Abd-Al-Rashid Ghazi. There were other types of visit from Emirs from the United Arab Emirates to practice the sport of falconry. They would travel to Kandahar in their private jets.

Some visitors of every type met members of the government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and some even visited the Mujahideen camps if they were considered trustworthy from a security point of view. That does not mean that anyone who visited a Mujahideen camp or gave a lecture was a member of the group or agreed with their ideology. During the school vacations in the Arab peninsula, Kandahar would be filled with visitors, but that doesn’t mean that anyone who gave a lecture in the Mujahideen guesthouses planned military operations. It was commonplace for visiting scholars at these camps to give religious lectures warning them against radicalization, unlawful killing, and “takfir” — the act of declaring someone an infidel. Such visitors would return back to their countries after their vacations were over.

The Media and Abu Ghaith

Sheikh Osama bin Laden (Allah have mercy upon him) appointed me to serve as head of the As-Sahab Foundation for Media Publication, the media front for Al-Qaeda, for a period of time.

Al-Qaeda’s media policy in its war against the enemy occupiers is clear and appropriate to the nature of the war. It is a war of attrition since we are not confronting our enemies in conventional warfare due to the lack of balance between the two sides and the asymmetrical nature of the conflict.

The enemy occupier of the Islamic World is a super power with millions of soldiers and a budget of billions while we are a small organization whose members are limited in numbers and capabilities. There is no comparison between the two sides, so it is obvious that we would have to resort to a long war of attrition to which the military and media alike contribute.

Anyone who reviews the history of our publications and compares them to the events that happened before, during, and after September 11th knows this very well. The U.S. government canceled some joint military maneuvers in Jordan and closed some embassies in the period of time before 9/11 as a result of some media publications, some leaked news, the release of some simple clips of a speech by Osama bin Laden, and the publication of the video “Destroying the Destroyer” at that time as well as the appearance of pictures of Mujahideen camps and their military training.

All this was not in vain because, while the enemy has capabilities that we do not possess, we have the same mental capacity Allah gave to all; and while they use their muscles, we use our minds. Sheikh Osama (Allah have mercy upon him) was very wise in every order he gave us; all of this was part of our media policy to achieve our strategic goals of exhausting our enemy’s efforts, capabilities, and financial assets to the greatest extent possible. Every state of emergency declared and every change of alert level that inflicts specific procedures on the military and civilian sectors costs the country millions of dollars. It is enough that the U.S. government has incurred losses upwards of a trillion dollars in the wars it has waged in the aftermath of 9/11, the bleeding of which continues to this day.

As for the question about whether every person tasked with making statements knows the purpose behind them, the definitive answer is that those commissioned with playing a role in the media, such as reporting on letters or speeches, do not know the extent of them or what is behind them or that this is only a war of attrition. The operations which the leadership intends to undertake and the plans for them are known only to the leader of the operation and the military and security officials involved; those carrying out the operations are not privy to the specific plans until the goal or time of the operation approaches for fear that the operation will be botched or miscarried.

Perhaps there is another reason for a person to be tasked regardless of his affiliation and that is the rhetorical ability of the person or the strength and discipline of his speech or his literary fortitude — especially if he is an eloquent, spellbinding speaker. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghayth was commissioned for this mission.

List of Names

There were a number of lists of recorded names in addition to cards, IDs, and charts located in different places, either houses or other places around Pakistan and Afghanistan.

You should know that most of the Arab families had alternate sources of income. Some of them practiced business while others did full-time work to support the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan whether it be as teachers, engineers, Mujahideen, or those who cooperated with the Ministry of Defense.

There were wealthy philanthropists who would send donations through various means according to the number of groups in a given area of Afghanistan. There were Arab communities of non-Afghans in Jalalabad, Khost, Kabul, Herat, Kandahar, and so on; so there was not a single, fixed system for dispersing funds, especially the expenses and financial guarantees distributed by Al-Qaeda to its beneficiaries. It did not limit its members, families, and sympathizers, rather it gave freely to all needy families, regardless of their loyalties or affiliation, for two reasons: one, because it was a religious obligation ordering them to consider all the needy equally and fairly and without discriminating between them; and two, because it was a requirement for many donors to not limit funding to any particular category of people but to give to all those who needed it. There were tables and charts and lists of names of families who received aid and these lists did not delineate the affiliation of the person on record. At one point the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was trying to keep track of the number of Arabs and arrivals from abroad, so there were permits and cards to facilitate their legal dealings. Many of the Arab brothers had lost their legal papers, travel visas, and all their official documents; so some of the groups tried to make lists of names of everyone who wanted to obtain Afghan ID cards without distinguishing between groups, or for anyone who needed one.

“Brevity” Cards

One of the problems the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan suffered from as a result of the oppressive sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its regional allies was that it did not have an effective wired communication network while a mobile phone network was completely non-existent.

Thus, many Arab families and others would resort to using wireless radios or walkie-talkies. Since wireless radio networks are open to all, it was necessary to arrange a schedule and codes to organise most of those using these devices whether they be Arabs or Afghanis in order to prevent overlapping signals and interference and to facilitate communications, as well as save power on these devices considering all the different channels being used during times of heavy communication.

Accordingly, these cards were put into use because they included most of the important facilitates such as hospitals, workshops, schools, or other codes written on the chart along with a list of people who use them. This was not limited to Al-Qaeda or Arabs. One studying the cards would find that they are not related to Al-Qaeda members alone, but also contain names of Taliban members and others.

When the Americans bombed the city of Kandahar and the number of killed and wounded was mounting, it became necessary to add appropriate terms in light of the bombings. In Kandahar there was no front line of battle since the U.S. forces contented themselves with intense air strikes and wireless communication networks were used to transport the injured and evacuate families from homes that had been bombed. Thus, it was necessary to adopt appropriate codes for those situations.

Leaving Afghanistan

When the U.S. invasion commenced in October of 2001 and the number of people killed or injured began to rise, and when the Emir of the Believers, the president of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Allah preserve him), decided to preserve the blood of civilians from the worst of the attacks, the order came for all Arab families to leave the country entirely. The defense strategy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan changed and a guerilla war began against the occupying crusader forces in the country. They did this in order to prevent mass civilian casualties due to the intense air strikes in the cities.

So the non-Afghan families began to leave Afghanistan and I personally oversaw all the families leaving Kandahar for Pakistani Baluchistan. There were many different families from all the Afghan provinces and each area had a specific exit route. All the Arab families were dispersed throughout Jalalabad, Herat, Khost, Kandahar, and other cities and there was no fixed system for removing the families; however high priority and concern was given to the aged and the newly arrived, die to their unfamiliarity with the language and the country which prompted the Sheikhs to make specific and general provisions for them. Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghayth was not included in the list of families from Kandahar because his family was not with him; they were in Kuwait.

Bayat

Bayat is an oath taken by a member in the introductory phase obligating him to hear and obey [the one to whom he has sworn] as long as the orders do not contradict Islamic principles.

There is no specific rite or ceremony to swear bayat. The swearer has only to extend his hand to Sheikh Osama bin Laden and say a few words expressing his willingness to be obedient and undertake migration and jihad for the sake of Allah.

There is no one in Al-Qaeda whose mission it is to give speeches pushing people to swear bayat. I myself was one of the ones who worked with the Sheikh, was responsible for media production, and attended Shura meetings with him but did not swear bayat to him. He never once spoke to me about swearing bayat because he knew me well and trusted me. Then one day I swore bayat to him on my own without anyone pushing me to do so. Swearing bayat to the president of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the leader of the faithful, Mullah Omar was mandatory; whereas swearing bayat to Sheikh Osama bin Laden was not.

The United States tries to fabricate charges against innocent people, saying they swore bayat or incited others to do so. Swearing bayat does not mean that a person is placed on a list to carry out an operation; even the cook has sworn bayat.

As for the question of whether I saw Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghaith giving lectures or participating in activities to push Arab Mujahideen to swear bayat to Sheikh Osama bin Laden, the answer is no. To tell the truth, I do not even know if Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghaith personally swore bayat to Sheikh Osama bin Laden or not.

Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghayth and the Shoe Bomb Operation

I personally never spoke with Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghayth about the Shoe Bomb Operation. As I mentioned before on page two, Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghayth was not a military man and had nothing to do with military operations. Also, as I mentioned on page seven, those tasked with giving statements to the media do not necessarily know all the details of an operation and are sometimes even unaware of the very existence of the operation. I do not recall ever seeing Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghayth with my brother Abdul-Jabbar (Richard Reid, Allah preserve him).