By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 30, 2007

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, March 29 -- An alleged senior financier of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States acknowledged he had a role in helping the hijackers but said he is not a member of al-Qaeda and denied having much prior knowledge of the plot, according to a transcript released by the Defense Department on Thursday.

Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a Saudi national who allegedly played a key role in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, told a Combatant Status Review Tribunal last week that he was in contact with four of the Sept. 11 hijackers and that he received a series of money transfers from the men in the days before the plot was carried out, according to the transcript. He also told the tribunal that he spoke with Mohamed Atta but was unaware of what was going to unfold.

"On September 11, I knew there was an operation," Hawsawi said. He later went to Pakistan and Afghanistan before his arrest in 2003. The detainee arrived in Cuba in September along with 13 other high-value detainees who had been in secret CIA custody.

Hawsawi's statements to the military tribunal were released as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates repeated his public refrain about wanting to close the island detention center, telling a congressional panel in Washington that the "taint" the facility has acquired internationally could cause military commissions here to "lack credibility." The comments came on the eve of hearings related to the guilty plea of Australian David Hicks, the first detainee to face the untested legal proceedings.

Gates told the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee that he has wanted to move trials for terrorism suspects to the United States, and he asked Congress to consider language that would allow the United States to deal with terrorists "who really need to be incarcerated forever, but that doesn't get them involved in a judicial system where there is a potential of them being released, frankly."

Prosecutors here have said there are about 75 detainees who probably will be charged with crimes at military commissions, but there are hundreds more who will be either transferred to other countries or held indefinitely.

Hawsawi is among approximately 385 detainees who are still at Guantanamo but have not been charged with crimes. His statements to the military tribunal cannot be independently verified, and they differ dramatically from testimony presented in U.S. federal court that purported to be derived from secret CIA interrogations. In a statement presented to jurors in Zacarias Moussaoui's terror trial in the spring of 2006, Hawsawi allegedly admitted playing a central role in facilitating the Sept. 11 attacks, working closely with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who allegedly orchestrated the plot.

It is unclear why Hawsawi's comments to CIA interrogators differ from statements to the tribunal. Also unknown are the techniques the interrogators used.

In statements to the CIA, Hawsawi said he bought plane tickets to the United States for some of the hijackers, coordinated elements of the plot with Atta and at one point had a hijacker living with him in his apartment.

His statements to the tribunal, according to the transcript, show that he wanted to distance himself from al-Qaeda but also show him as unapologetic for helping militant extremists. The tribunal is trying to determine if Hawsawi is an enemy combatant.

"Are you an al-Qaeda member?" asked one of the military officers on the tribunal, eliciting a negative answer from Hawsawi. The officer then asked why Hawsawi has so many associations with al-Qaeda members.

"I help all the jihadists," Hawsawi answered.

He went on to say that he has never taken an oath to be a jihadist, nor has he sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden, whom he said he has met four or five times, according to the transcript.

Hawsawi admitted being close to Mohammed and told the tribunal that he was captured at the same time as Mohammed, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003.

The only substantive part of the transcript that is redacted appears to relate to their capture.

Also on Thursday, the chief prosecutor for military commissions here, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, said his team has been meeting with the defense attorney for Hicks in preparation for hearings Friday and Saturday that probably will determine a sentence for Hicks for allegedly providing support for terrorism. Hicks entered a guilty plea on Monday, and the presiding officer has yet to accept it.

Davis said prosecutors are going to argue for "something substantially lower" than the 20-year sentence given to American John Walker Lindh on terrorism charges, describing Hicks as "wrongful, but not at the top of the pyramid." Hicks is likely to be sentenced by the end of the week.

Hicks's father has said that he pleaded guilty simply as a way to end his five-year incarceration.

Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.