Detainee admits beheading Pearl

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Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, confessed to U.S. military officials he beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl "with my blessed right hand."

In revised transcripts released yesterday by the Pentagon of a Saturday hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to determine his enemy-combatant status, Mohammed said he decapitated "the American Jew" in Karachi, Pakistan, in January 2002 because he was seeking information about a now-convicted shoe bomber.

"For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head," he said.

The confession was withheld in the first release of the 26-page transcript on Wednesday night, Pentagon officials said, to allow time for Mr. Pearl's family to be notified.

The veteran reporter was abducted in the Pakistani port city of Karachi on Jan. 23, 2002, as he tried to contact Islamic militant groups to investigate possible connections between then-shoe-bombing suspect Richard C. Reid and al Qaeda, founded by fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden. The reporter's grisly Feb. 20, 2002, death was recorded on a video that surfaced in Pakistan, his throat slit by a man in a hood.

Mr. Pearl left behind a widow, Marina, who was about to give birth to their first child.

Mohammed, who was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003 and later transferred to U.S. custody, was suspected early on as the reporter's killer.

During the hearing, he told the court in English about the killing, but he claimed it was not an al Qaeda operation. "It's like beheading Daniel Pearl. It's not related to al Qaeda," he said, adding instead that it involved the Pakistan Mujahideen.

In the hearing, Mohammed also said he had planned a second round of terrorist strikes on U.S. soil after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- targeting some of the country's tallest skyscrapers, suspension bridges and nuclear power plants.

In the unclassified documents, Mohammed said he dispatched an al Qaeda loyalist to the United States "to case targets for a second wave of attacks" and claimed responsibility for "planning, training, surveying and financing" the attacks on the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Plaza Bank in Seattle and the Empire State Building in New York.