I plotted E. African terror, sez Qaeda big

ny daily
WASHINGTON - Another top Al Qaeda thug has confessed, this time to masterminding attacks on the destroyer Cole and two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Walid Bin Attash admitted to his "many roles" in the suicide bombings. But unlike 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, he didn't offer regrets.

Attash told a military tribunal at the Guantanamo naval base that he was "the link" between Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and the Nairobi, Kenya, cell behind the 1998 embassy attacks that killed 213 people, including 12 Americans.

Attash also said he was with Bin Laden in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Oct. 12, 2000, when a small boat blew a hole in the Cole, moored in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 U.S. sailors.

"I put together the plan for the operation a year and a half prior to the operation," Bin Attash admitted. He bought the boat and explosives, and was in charge of "recruiting the members that did the operation."

The tribunal is likely to determine Bin Attash is an "enemy combatant" eligible for a war crimes trial.

Military trials for low-level detainees are set to begin this summer, and trials for senior operatives may begin soon after, according to an informed source.

Gary Solis, a Georgetown University expert on the law of war, said the confessions make it much easier to prosecute.

"You take the evidence handed to the military on a platter, verify it, convict them and sentence them to death," Solis said.