The sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui has cast new light on the planning of the 9/11 atrocities in the US. Josh Meyer reports from Washington
The September 11th mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has told his interrogators that at least 34 individuals were "participants" in the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, including a mysterious Jordanian who supposedly prepared 10 of the hijackers for their grisly task by training them to butcher camels and sheep with Swiss Army knives.
Mohammed's statements were read aloud in court last week during the sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged as a co-conspirator in the attacks in the United States.
His disclosures open a revealing window into the inner workings of the 9/11 plot, in terms of who allegedly participated in it and how it was carried out.
During his interrogations at undisclosed locations overseas, Mohammed broke down the participants in the attacks into six groups, each having differing levels of involvement in the plot or prior knowledge of it, according to a 58-page summary. The US government has refused to allow Mohammed to testify in person.
In the top tier were Osama bin Laden, his loyal aide and military commander Muhammed Atef and Mohammed himself, along with his designated liaison to the hijackers, Ramzi Binalshibh.
The only other member of the top tier was Abu Turab al-Urduni, a Jordanian who, according to Mohammed's statement, had "full knowledge" of the plot as trainer of 10 of the "muscle" hijackers, whose job was to commandeer the planes, subdue the pilots and keep the passengers at bay.
Abu Turab, as he was referred to in the summary, had years of experience with al-Qaeda and was working at the terror network's al-Matar complex in Afghanistan in late 2000 and early 2001 when 10 would-be hijackers were given to him for training, Mohammed's interrogation summary stated.
Abu Turab trained the men in how to hijack a plane, how to disarm air marshals and how to put together and use explosives, the summary said. He allegedly showed them how to gain strength through bodybuilding and taught them basic English words and phrases.
And at a second al-Qaeda camp, al-Faruq, "Abu Turab also had each hijacker butcher a sheep and camel with a Swiss knife to prepare them for using their knives during the hijackings".
In consultation with Mohammed himself, the summary said, Abu Turab instructed the "muscle" hijackers to focus on seizing the cockpit first "and then worry about seizing control over the rest of the plane". He also ensured the hijackers did not know in advance what their assignment in the US would be.
The disclosures, if true, are significant in that one of the more senior co-conspirators of the September 11th attacks - Abu Turab - has never been identified publicly until now, despite years of investigations, public hearings and commission reports. Mohammed also named two al-Qaeda officials, whose identities were known, as having played previously undisclosed but lesser roles in the attacks.
One is Ammar al-Baluchi, a relative of Mohammed who rose to become one of al-Qaeda's top handful of operatives before being captured in Pakistan last year.
Mohammed identified al-Baluchi as a key travel and financial facilitator for the hijackers, along with Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, whose role as a United Arab Emirates-based paymaster for the attacks has been acknowledged by US officials since he was captured with Mohammed in raids in Pakistan in March 2003.
The other previously undisclosed operative was Abd al-Rahim Ghulam Rabbani, also known as Abu Ramah, who Mohammed said helped several of the hijackers go through Pakistan on their way in and out of Afghanistan.
Several US authorities reacted to the evidence in court by saying they viewed at least some of Mohammed's claims with scepticism because he had been proven a calculated expert at providing disinformation to send his pursuers down blind alleys and protect ongoing al-Qaeda plots. But a US intelligence official familiar with the continuing investigation confirmed the basic outlines of Mohammed's claims, particularly about Abu Turab. He said the Jordanian was killed by US forces in Afghanistan in late 2001, around the time that Atef was killed by a US airstrike.
That official and others, however, said that the true role that Abu Turab, al-Baluchi and others played may never be fully known to US authorities, at least until such key figures as bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, are captured.