Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (Arabic: خالد شيخ محمد‎; also transliterated as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and additionally known by at least fifty aliases) is a Kuwait-born militant currently in U.S. custody in Guantánamo Bay for alleged acts of terrorism, including mass murder of civilians.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a member of Osama bin Laden's terrorist group al-Qaeda organization, although he lived in Afghanistan, heading al-Qaeda's propaganda operations from sometime around 1999. The 9/11 Commission Report alleges that he was "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks." He is also alleged to have confessed to a role in many of the most significant terrorist plots over the last twenty years, including the World Trade Center 1993 bombings, the Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, the Millennium Plot, and the murder of Daniel Pearl.

He was captured on March 1, 2003, in hiding in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency of Pakistan, and transferred to U.S. custody. In March 2007, he confessed to masterminding the September 11 attacks, the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and various foiled attacks. He was charged in February 2008 with war crimes and murder by a U.S. military commission and faces the death penalty if convicted.