Qaeda "superterrorist" seen as inflating own role

By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - A vast catalogue of worldwide plots confessed to by a captured al Qaeda planner is largely a 'wish list' that exaggerates his real importance, security analysts said on Thursday.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who says he masterminded the September 11 attacks on the United States, told a closed military hearing at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay that he had also hatched, or helped, in 30 other conspiracies spanning the globe.

He listed attack plans in at least 17 countries, from a scheme to blow up the Panama Canal to attempts to assassinate former U.S. president Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul in the Philippines.

"He's claiming to be the superman and the superhero and the superterrorist," said Mustafa Alani, an al Qaeda expert at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

"It is a 'wish list', and it's possibly no more than ideas," said Alani who argued it was inconceivable al Qaeda would have taken the risk of entrusting its full range of operations to one man.

Several analysts suggested Mohammed had exaggerated his role in a bid to win hero status among al Qaeda sympathisers, and possibly to try to deflect blame from other prisoners.

"Maybe also he wants to save others," said Abdel Bari Atwan, London-based editor of Arab newspaper Al-Quds.

"He is not a man who is trying to save his neck. No, he believes his death or his execution is a blessing, he will go to paradise. This is the psychology behind it."