Waleed bin Attash, a suspected key al-Qaeda operative, confessed to plotting the bombings of the USS Cole and two US embassies in Africa, according to a Defence Department transcript of a hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.More than 200 were killed in the simultaneous attacks on the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. And 17 sailors were killed and dozens injured when suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the guided missile destroyer Cole on Oct 12, 2000.“I participated in the buying or purchasing of the explosives,” bin Attash said. “I put together the plan for the operation a year and a half prior to the operation, buying the boat and recruiting the members that did the operation.”Bin Attash, a Yemeni who was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, is one of 14 so called “high-value” prisoners transferred last year to US military custody at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base after being held by the CIA at a secret location. Hearings for them, started March 9, are being conducted in secret by the military.Bin Attash, who was captured in 2003 and is now in his late 20s, told a March 12 hearing that he met with the man who did the embassy bombings just a few hours before the operation took place, according to the transcript released by the Defence Department on Monday.
