Read the full tribunal transcript released by the Pentagon

The suspected mastermind of the September 11 terror attacks in New York has confessed publicly for the first time to the atrocity during an unprecedented military trial at Guantanamo Bay.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was moved from a secret CIA prison to the US naval base on Cuba in September, admitted to planning, financing and training the 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks, according to tribunal transcripts released by the Pentagon last night.

“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” claimed a statement in his name that was read out by a US military officer representing him at the hearing. The confession was read with Sheikh Mohammed present.

He also claimed responsibility for a host of other terrorist attacks and plots, including the financing and training of Richard Reid, the failed British shoebomber, the attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993 and the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, in 2002. The statement said that Sheikh Mohammed had plotted a second wave of attacks after the strikes on September 11, 2001, with hijacked airliners. The targets were to have been the Library Tower, Los Angeles, the Sears Tower, Chicago, the Plaza Bank, Washington State, and the Empire State Building, New York.

Sheikh Mohammed, who is believed to have been at Osama bin Laden’s side during the September 11 attacks, is the most senior alQaeda figure to have been arrested since 2001. He was captured in Pakistan in March 2003.

Times Recommends

• Mandela’s tribe threatens President Zuma
• The French empire strikes back
• Wife of cheating governor exacts a political revenge