Terrorist chief Osama bin Laden supposed to assault India and several other different international locations years in the past, a newly declassified CIA intelligence transient has revealed.
Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda community recognized India and Pakistan as doable targets for terrorist strikes years earlier than the September 11, 2001 attacks in America, per the highest secret doc ready for US president Invoice Clinton in 1998.
The revelation is a part of a significant CIA launch which got here on the twenty fifth anniversary of 9/11. On September 11, the CIA made 71 intelligence studies public. It was the biggest launch of 9/11-related data.
One transient, titled “Bin Ladin Terrorist Community Nonetheless a Menace” and dated August 28, 1998, stated bin Laden supposed to assault a number of international locations, together with India and Pakistan.
It stated he deliberate assaults in “Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula—particularly Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen—India, Pakistan, Uganda, and probably Nigeria.” The transient additionally stated US officers had helped arrest bin Laden operatives getting ready assaults in Tirana, Albania, and probably Baku, Azerbaijan.
What the 1998 CIA evaluation means
The doc doesn’t element any particular assault plan for India. It reveals that US intelligence assessed India and Pakistan as international locations the place bin Laden’s community supposed to hold out assaults, greater than three years earlier than 9/11.
The warning got here weeks after the August 7, 1998, US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which killed 224 folks and introduced bin Laden and al-Qaeda firmly into the main focus of US counterterrorism officers.
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India would face a significant terror assault three years later. On December 13, 2001, terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed stormed the Parliament complicated in New Delhi.
9 folks, together with safety personnel and a gardener, have been killed within the assault; all 5 attackers have been additionally killed.
The Parliament assault got here three months after the September 11 assaults within the US.
Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan
Pakistan later grew to become deeply intertwined with the US hunt for bin Laden and the al-Qaeda community. The CIA’s 9/11 data present that US intelligence continued to watch bin Laden’s actions and his relationship with the Taliban. A later CIA evaluation in June 2000 was particularly titled “Pakistan urgent Bin Ladin community.”
Bin Laden in the end spent his closing years hiding in Pakistan. In 2010, intelligence linked one in all his couriers to a compound in Abbottabad, close to Islamabad.
US forces killed bin Laden there in a raid on Could 2, 2011.
Warnings about 9/11 got here later
The CIA data embrace a July 1998 transient on doable US assaults, a December 1998 warning about plane hijackings, and the August 6, 2001 transient titled “Bin Ladin Decided To Strike in US.”
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On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked 4 US passenger planes. American Airways Flight 11 crashed into the World Commerce Middle’s North Tower, adopted by United Airways Flight 175 hitting the South Tower. Each towers later collapsed.
American Airways Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Passengers on United Airways Flight 93 fought again towards the hijackers earlier than the airplane crashed in Pennsylvania.
A complete of two,977 folks, excluding the 19 hijackers, have been killed.
What was Osama bin Laden’s position?
Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s founder and chief, directed the organisation behind the assaults. He was not one of many hijackers. The plot developed over a number of years.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom the 9/11 Fee known as the assault’s “principal architect”, labored with bin Laden and different al-Qaeda leaders on the plan.