9/11 Planner Confesses To Many Plots

But Saturday's hearing was the first time Mohammed had faced a U.S. legal proceeding since he was captured in Pakistan in March 2003. And it was the first time he was allowed to freely discuss U.S. allegations without interrogators present. He used the opportunity to present charges that he had been tortured by his U.S. captors, and he attempted to portray himself as a soldier fighting a war of independence.

"What I wrote here is not I'm making myself hero when I said I was responsible for this or that," Mohammed said, addressing the U.S. Navy captain who presided over the tribunal. "You are military man. You know very well there are language for any war."

None of the military officers who participated were named, a common practice in the tribunals that is intended to prevent possible retribution.

Mohammed was held by the CIA in a secret U.S. detention facility for more than three years. He was moved into military custody at Guantanamo Bay in September after the Supreme Court ruled that all Al Qaeda detainees were covered by the Geneva Convention, which prohibits inhumane treatment.

Saturday's hearing, formally called a combatant status review tribunal, was intended to determine whether Mohammed will officially be classified as an "enemy combatant" and held at Guantanamo Bay.

Although Mohammed's tribunal is largely a formality, under military detention rules adopted after a series of Supreme Court rulings, all Guantanamo Bay detainees must be accorded such a hearing. A ruling is likely to take several weeks.

The government's case against him is based at least in part on a computer hard drive that the Pentagon said was seized when Mohammed was captured and that contained code names, flight numbers and photos of the Sept. 11 hijackers. But the case also may include classified evidence that was not made public or provided to Mohammed.

In addition to his claims of being involved in dozens of successful and foiled terrorist plots -- including the so-called second wave of planned attacks on U.S. buildings, the Library Tower in Los Angeles among them -- Mohammed asked that other detainees at Guantanamo Bay be treated humanely, arguing that many of them were not Al Qaeda or Taliban operatives.

Mohammed appears to have exaggerated his role in some of the plots. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, for instance, was masterminded by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who was convicted of coordinating the attack by a U.S. court in 1996.