A senior al-Qaeda figure who confessed to being the mastermind of the September 11 terror attacks in New York also confessed to having beheaded an American journalist, according to revised transcripts from his military trial released today.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was moved from a secret CIA prison to the US naval base on Cuba in September, said he executed Daniel Pearl, of The Wall Street Journal, who was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in 2002.

“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl," claimed a statement in his name that was read out by a US military officer representing him at the unprecedented trial at Guantanamo Bay.

"For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the internet holding his head," the statement read.

The initial transcript was released by the Pentagon yesterday evening. Bryan Whitman, Department of Defence spokesman, said that references to Pearl's killing were withheld until today to make sure the reporter's family were aware of the statement.

Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Pakistan while researching a story on Islamic militancy. Sheikh Mohammad, the most senior al-Qaeda figure to have been arrested since 2001, has been a prime suspect in Pearl's killing for some time.

He admitted to planning, financing and training the 19 hijackers who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks, saying: “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z."

He also claimed responsibility for a series 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.

Sheikh Mohammed, who is believed to have been at Osama bin Laden’s side during the September 11 attacks, was captured in Pakistan in March 2003. He was present as the confession was read.

The statement said that he had plotted a second wave of attacks with hijacked airliners after 9/11, on the Library Tower, in California, the Sears Tower, Chicago, the Plaza Bank, in Washington State, and the Empire State Building, New York.

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