Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Pakistani militant who was a member of al-Qaeda
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (born 14 April 1965; Urdu: خالد شیخ محمد; sometimes also spelled Shaykh; and known by at least 50 pseudonyms including his initials KSM) is a Kuwaiti-born Pakistani militant, and the former head of propaganda for al-Qaeda. As of 2026, he is held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-related charges. He was named as "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" in the 2004 9/11 Commission Report.
Mohammed was a member of Osama bin Laden's militant organization al-Qaeda, leading al-Qaeda's propaganda operations from around 1999 until late 2001. Mohammed was captured on 1 March 2003, in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi by a combined operation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Immediately after his capture, Mohammed was taken to secret CIA prison sites in Afghanistan, then Poland, where he was interrogated by U.S. operatives. By December 2006, he had been transferred to military custody at Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Mohammed is widely regarded as the chief planner of the September 11 attacks. The United States government has alleged that he further participated in planning Richard Reid's shoe bombing attempt to attack an airliner; the 2002 Bali bombings in Indonesia; the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; the murder of Daniel Pearl and various foiled attacks as well as numerous other crimes. These claims have been criticised by others, such as military prosecutor Moe Davis and journalist Andrew Brown, as inadmissible due to being obtained through torture.
“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed” enters the record as pakistani militant who was a member of al-Qaeda. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Khalid, Sheikh and Mohammed can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q319068. VIAF identifies the subject as 98063170. The Library of Congress control number is nb2003006574. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 2026, 2004 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.