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The man accused of devising the plan to hijack airliners and smash them against iconic United States landmarks 20 years ago is in jail awaiting trial.
But could he have been arrested years earlier?
“The guy was mine.
Frank Pellegrino was sitting in a hotel room in Malaysia when he saw images of planes crashing into the Twin Towers on television.
His first thought was, “My God, it must be Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The goal and ambitions matched and Pellegrino was in a unique position to find out.
Former FBI Special Agent had haunted Mohammed for nearly three decades. However, the suspected mastermind of 9/11 has yet to be brought to justice.
A lawyer for Mohammed told the BBC it could be another 20 years before the deal is done.
Osama Bin Laden, then head of al-Qaeda, is the man most closely associated with the September 11 attacks.
But the reality Mohammed, or “KSM” as he was known, was the “main architect”according to the 9/11 Commission which investigated the attacks.
He was the one who came up with the idea and presented it to al-Qaeda.
Born in Kuwait, he studied in the United States before fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Years before the September 11 attack, FBI agent Frank Pellegrino was on the trail of the jihadist.
Pellegrino had been tasked by the FBI to investigate the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
This is where Mohammed’s name first came to the attention of US authorities because he had made a money transfer to one of the people involved.
The FBI agent realized the magnitude of Mohammed’s ambition in 1995 when he was linked to a plot to fly and crash planes over the Pacific.
In the mid-1990s, Pellegrino almost landed his man and followed him to Qatar.
He and his team traveled to Oman from where they planned to travel to Qatar and arrest Mohammed.
A plane was ready to bring the suspect back. But there was resistance from US diplomats on the ground.
Pellegrino traveled to Qatar and told the ambassador and other embassy officials that he had an indictment against Mohammed for the plot involving the planes.
But he says they have been careful not to cause trouble in the country. “I guess they thought maybe that might stir the waters,” Pellegrino recalls.
Finally, the ambassador informed Pellegrino that Qatari officials said they had lost Mohammed.
“There was outrage, anger and frustration,” he says. “We knew at the time that this was a missed opportunity.”
But he admits that in the mid-1990s, Mohammed was not seen as a prime target.
Pellegrino couldn’t even make it to the top ten most wanted list in the United States. “They told me there were already too many terrorists there.”
It appears that Mohammed received an alert about US interest in him and fled Qatar to end up in Afghanistan.
Over the following years, KSM’s name continued to appear, often on the phone lists of arrested terrorism suspects around the world, making it clear that he was well connected.
It was during those years who went to bin Laden with the idea of training pilots to fly planes against buildings in the United States.
And then it happened on September 11th. Pellegrino’s suspicions of KSM’s role would prove to be correct when a key Al Qaeda figure in custody identified him.
“When we found out he was the guy, there was no one who felt more miserable than me.”
In 2003, Mohammed was located and arrested in Pakistan. Pellegrino expected to be tried under the indictment he had been working on.
But then he disappeared. The CIA had taken him to a “black spot” where “enhanced interrogation techniques” were used.
“I want to know what he knows, and I want to know it quickly,” said a senior CIA official at the time.
Mohammed was subjected to “waterboarding” – something described as “almost drowned” – at least 183 times.
He was subjected to rectal rehydration, stress poses, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, and was told his children would be killed.
He confessed to several plots during this time. But a Senate report later revealed that much of the suspected intelligence had been fabricated by the inmate.
After details of the CIA’s detention program were revealed, “high value detainees” like Mohammed were transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
Eventually, he was allowed access to the FBI.
In January 2007, Frank Pellegrino found himself face to face with the man he had haunted for so long.
They were seated at the table face to face.
“I let him know that I was involved in a lawsuit against him in the 1990s,” he said, hoping to open the conversation to extract information about 9/11.
The former FBI agent did not disclose details of what was said, but admitted that “he’s a very interesting guy with a sense of humor, believe it or not.”
During hearings at Guantanamo, KSM was often seen as “explosive” and Pellegrino describes the world’s most infamous terrorist suspect as a “Kardashian” in his desire for attention, and says he shows no remorse .
Would you like to confess or would you like to profit from a lawsuit? “Certainly I think he feels good about what he’s done and he loves the show, ”he says.
After six days of talks, Mohammed finally indicated that he had had enough. “And that was it,” Pellegrino recalls.
Subsequent attempts to do justice for 9/11 have failed.
A plan to hold a trial in New York failed after public and political opposition.
“Everyone was screaming ‘I don’t want this guy in my backyard. Keep him in Guantanamo,’ says Pellegrino, who is also a New Yorker.
Then came a military tribunal at Guantanamo. But procedural delays, made worse by the COVID pandemic that shut down the base, made the process long.
More hearings will take place this week, but it looks like the end is far away.
Mohammed’s lawyer believes the latest hearings are scheduled to show the media that something is happening on the 20th anniversary of September 11.
David Nevin told the BBC he expects “about 20 years for a full resolution of the process”.
The criminal defense lawyer has been handling the case since the beginning in 2008.
The original plan was to begin testing almost immediately. But they’re not yet close to starting, he says, noting that a newly appointed judge is “the eighth or the ninth magistrate we’ve had” depending on how you count it.
The judge must familiarize himself with approximately 35,000 pages of transcripts from previous hearings and thousands of motions in what Nevin describes as “the largest criminal trial in American history.”
And this is the more controversial.
This is mainly due to the fact that the five defendants were secretly detained by the CIA and subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques”.
This has led to discussions of tainted evidence of what happened in the so-called black places.
The United States “organized and implemented a clearly defined program to torture these men,” says Nevin.
These methods offer a wide possibility of potential appeals against any conviction that will drag on for years.
Nevin won’t reveal the details of what it’s like to represent one of the world’s most notorious defendants.
He says his client was initially “deeply skeptical” about being represented by a US lawyer, so there was a long process of getting to know each other.
When Mohammed was held in a top secret part of the naval base, the lawyers were placed in a van with darkened windows and driven for 45 minutes to disorient them, he explains.
But now your client is being held at Camp 5, which is less secret.
The legal team is aware of the sensitivity for the families of the victims of September 11 to attend court hearings.
At the meetings, some family members will challenge lawyers like Nevin for representing the defendants, but others will ask questions about how the process works.
“We are working very hard to not do anything that would add to the pain and suffering that they have gone through over the years,” Nevin said.
Another reason he thinks the process has been prolonged is that this is a death penalty case and it carries more consequences.
“It would have ended a long time ago if the government I would not have sought to execute these men. “
Pellegrino delayed his retirement from the FBI for three years in the hope that Mohammed’s military court at Guantanamo, in which he hopes to testify, would be completed. “It would have been nice to end this while I still had my badge.”
But the veteran special agent has reached retirement age and has just stepped down.
After traveling the world looking for clues about Mohammed, he now feels a strong sense of failure and wonders if his capture in the 1990s could have prevented 9/11.
“His name comes to mind every day and it’s not a pleasant thought,” he says.
“Time helps heal things. But it is.”
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