WASHINGTON - The man who beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan has been identified as a senior al-Qaeda leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, The Washington Post reported Thursday. A report by The Centre for Public Integrity said the FBI and CIA made the positive identification through a technique called vein matching, the newspaper. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who was arrested in Rawalpindi in 2003, is also suspected of planning the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. He previously claimed responsibility for the Wall Street Journal reporters death, and the three-year Pearl Project prepared by faculty and students at Georgetown University in Washington confirmed his identity. Pearls death was taped and shown on the Internet and elsewhere, but the person who beheaded him wore a covering on his face. Through vein matching (a technique that compared Mohammads hand with that of the killer), authorities were able to corroborate Mohammads previous confession. Mohammad, who has been water-boarded - a form of torture - many times during his captivity in the US prison at Guantanamo, has not yet been charged in the 2002 killing to which he confessed nearly four years ago. I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan, Mohammad said in a Pentagon transcript released nearly four years ago. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head. Other findings in the report are: The Pearl Project identified 27 men who played a part in Pearls execution. Many remain free. Members of at least three militant groups took part in the crime, including a team of kidnappers led by British-Pakistani Omar Sheikh, who offered to introduce Pearl to militant leaders, and a team of killers led by al-Qaeda strategist Mohammad. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad told FBI agents in Guantanamo he personally slit Pearls throat and severed his head to make certain hed get the death penalty to exploit the killing for propaganda.