9/11 Mastermind Renounces Violence

After more than a decade in American custody, confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed appears to have had second thoughts about the use of violence. The former al-Qaeda propaganda chief suggests Islam should not be spread by violence in a rambling manifesto viewed by Channel 4 News. He also blasts Western society, the US military, and quotes from Richard Nixon and George W. Bush as well as the Koran. He says two further installments of the manifesto will explain the 9/11 attacks and reveal "the truth about the so-called war on terror."

The Koran "forbids us to use force as a means of converting" others, and "truth and reality never comes by muscles and force but by using the mind and wisdom," writes Mohammed, who is being kept in solitary confinement at Guantanamo Bay. How sincere is he? The manifesto suggest that he either believes he can convert American readers, or is "playing a mind game to attract publicity, feign mental illness, or spare himself the death penalty if convicted in the 2001 attacks," decides the Los Angeles Times. (More Khalid Sheikh Mohammed stories.)