Waleed Mohammed Bin Attash, long suspected of planning the bombing of the battleship USS Cole, confessed to the attack during a hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a US Defence Department transcript released today.
He also said he helped plan the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed 213, the transcript said.
Seventeen sailors were killed and 37 injured when suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the battleship on October 12th, 2000.
"I participated in the buying or purchasing of the explosives," Mr Attash said when asked what his role was in the Cole bombing and the embassies.
"I put together the plan for the operation a year and a half prior to the operation."
Mr Attash, a Yemeni raised in Saudi Arabia, said he bought the boat and recruited the members that carried out the Cole bombing.
AP
