Lawfuel.com – Law News – Hard on the heals of the Pentagon’s multiple terrorism admissions from al Qaeda terrorist Khalid Mohammed comes another confession from a al Qaeda operative who has said he was the key figure behind the 2002 bombing of the USS Cole and the 1998 East Africa US embassy.
Wallid bin Attash said he bought the explosives and recruited members of the team that rammed the boat into the side of the Cole while it was refuelling in the Yemeni port of Aden.
He told a Pentagon military panel at Guantanamo Bay: “I put together the plan for the operation a-year-and-a-half prior to the operation.”
Seventeen US sailors were killed and 39 others were wounded in the attack, which nearly sank the $US1 billion state-of-the-art destroyer.
Asked where he was during the October 12, 2000 attack, Attash said he was with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
The bombings of the USS Cole and US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998 were the most serious al-Qaeda attacks before September 11, 2001, when hijackers flew airliners into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
