Two senators who watched Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confess to planning the Sept. 11 attacks and other plots said Friday that his allegations of mistreatment by U.S. captors should be taken seriously. “To do otherwise would reflect poorly on our nation,” Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in a joint statement, reports The Washington Post.
“Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that he doesn’t know if Mohammed’s stunning claims were all true or an embellishment.
“At a closed military hearing last Saturday at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval prison in Cuba, Mohammed claimed responsibility for plotting more than 30 attacks and personally beheading American journalist Daniel Pearl.”
For Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s profile, and his days in the US as a student in the 1980s, please click here…
In the 1980s he went to study in the US and graduated in 1986 with a degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina A & T State University. After his studies, he travelled to Afghanistan to fight with the mujahidin against the Soviet occupying army; three of his brothers are thought to have died in the conflict.
Excerpts: “Mohammed’s first extended encounter with the West occurred at Chowan College, a tiny Baptist school nestled among the cotton farms, tobacco patches and thick forests of eastern North Carolina, just south of the Virginia line.
“The school was founded in 1848 as a refuge of learning for proper Southern women. Later, it became a two-year junior college, a place where young adults could gain an academic foothold. Its entry standards were liberal, but its values were bedrock and its leafy setting in isolated Murfreesboro, with no bars and a single pizza shop, pretty much ensured that everyone remained on the straight and narrow.
“Students who recall Mohammed invariably describe a studious and private devotee of the library and Allah, but friendly enough in a casual way and capable of a laugh.
” ‘He was a good student — a bit better than a B-type student,’ Garth D. Faile, chairman of the science department, said in an interview.
” ‘He very much kept to himself,’ said Zitawi, now a gas station owner in the Greensboro area. ‘We’d see each other at the Burger King for coffee or lunch. That was our hangout…. He was always polite. He wasn’t a funny guy, but when he’s talking to you, you feel like he’s smiling. He wasn’t rude or anything.’
“Nor did Mohammed spout anti-Western or anti-American rhetoric. ‘Something must have happened later that caused that feeling,’ said Hindieh, who knew Mohammed at both Chowan and Greensboro. ‘I never remember him saying anything like that.’
“By the end of 1986, after just 2 1/2 years, Mohammed had completed his work. He graduated Dec. 18, one of 28 mechanical engineering graduates, almost a third of them Middle Easterners. As at Chowan, there is no photo of him in the yearbook.
“None of almost a dozen faculty members in the department from that era recalled Mohammed. For most of his classmates and teachers, the future terrorist mastermind with a $25-million price on his head did not cast a long shadow, if any at all.”
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.