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11 March 2002
Six Months On
Part I: The Perpretrators
THE BIN LADEN ‘CONFESSION’
The war in Afghanistan was justified
by two central arguments: the first was that Saudi terrorist leader
Osama bin Laden was the prime mover behind 11 September. US Vice-President
Dick Cheney said within days of the attacks that there was no
doubt that Osama bin Laden played ‘a significant part’ in the
atrocities. (Independent, 17 Sept. p. 5) Yet even now,
six months on, the only real evidence that bin Laden even knew
about the attacks beforehand is contained in a video ‘confession’.
The ‘evidence’ produced by the
British Government in its famous 70 point dossier was summed up
accurately in a Guardian editorial: ‘the reality is that
Mr Blair’s case comes down to two words: trust me’. (5 Oct. 2001,
p. 23) Anthony Scrivener QC commented, ‘it is a sobering thought
that better evidence is required to prosecute a shoplifter than
is needed to commence a world war’. (Times, 5 Oct., p.
7) As for the ‘secret evidence’ disclosed to close allies, this
was only strong enough for General Musharraf, military leader
of Pakistan, to say that there was evidence ‘leading to an association’
between 11 September and bin Laden.’ (FT, 6 Oct., p. 7)
Turning to the video (apparently
made by a bin Laden supporter), according to a US Government transcript
bin Laden says, ‘We calculated in advance the number of casualties
from the enemy... We calculated that the floors that would be
hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of
them all... due to my experience in this field, I was thinking
that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure
of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and
all the floors above it... We had notification since the previous
Thursday that the event would take place that day.’ (Newsweek,
24 Dec. 2001, p. 18) The al-Qaeda leader also says, ‘we asked’
(some of) the men who conducted the attack to go to the US to
take part in the ‘operation’.
Assuming that bin Laden was telling
the truth and not embroidering his role in front of an admiring
audience, the video shows foreknowledge of the attacks, and a
considerable contribution to the conspiracy - in the shape of
the ‘brothers’ sent to the USA to take part in the attacks. However,
it does not demonstrate that bin Laden ordered the attacks, or
that he planned them.
Recall that just a few days after
the attacks on New York and Washington DC Jurgen Storbeck, the
director of Europol (the EU’s anti-terrorist organisation), ‘cautioned
against jumping to conclusions before the mass of evidence had
been properly sifted’: "Bin Laden is not the automatic leader
of every terrorist act carried out in the name of Islam. It’s
possible that he was informed about the operation; it’s even possible
that he influenced it; but he’s probably not the man who steered
every action or controlled the detailed plan. As for the idea
that, sitting in Afghanistan, he could have controlled the last
phase of the operation is something we should not accept without
a lot of doubt... There are a lot of people with the same philosophy
who may have been to bin Laden’s training camps, but are not necessarily
under his orders." (Daily Telegraph, 15 Sept.,
p. 9)
Tony Blair’s dossier made much
of the ‘fact’ that al-Qaeda was the only organisation with the
capacity and willingness to perpetrate such a crime, but as Anthony
Scrivener pointed out, ‘The main problem is that there are other
terrorist groups who share the same hatred of the Americans who
might have carried out this atrocity.’ (Times, 5 Oct.,
p. 7) For example, there was no mention in the dossier of the
1994 attempt by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria ‘to crash a
hijacked plane into the Eiffel Tower’. (Times, 5 Oct.,
p. 4)]
THE PERPETRATORS
11 September originated in Hamburg.
The conspiracy appears to have been led by an Egyptian student
by the name of Mohamed Atta who had lived in a flat in Hamburg
for eight years. Atta, 33, shared the flat with two other conspirators,
one of whom had been trained in Afghanistan. ‘German prosecutors
say it must have taken at least two years of detailed planning
to organise the attacks on America.’ A German intelligence source
said that ‘Afghanistan warriors’, Muslim radicals trained in Afghanistan,
‘have no connection with extremist organisations as far as organisational
structures are concerned. Rather, they represent a loose network
of small, often multinational, groups not subordinate to any common
leadership but which maintain contact with one another.’ (Financial
Times, 27 Sept. 2001, p. 3)
Irene Stoller, who retired in May
2001 after 13 years as director of France’s anti-terrorism division,
has remarked, ‘Bin Laden and his lieutenants may seem from the
outside like super-managers of international Islamist terror,
but the real planning and execution is carried out at lower levels.’
(Time, 26 Nov., p. 40) Ahmed Ressam, jailed for participation
in a failed al-Qaeda terrorist attack in 2000, told investigators
that al-Qaeda operatives are rarely given detailed instructions.
‘Rather they are trained and then sent out to almost autonomous
cells to act on their own, plan attacks and raise their own funds,
often using credit-card scams to load up on money, despite the
Islamic prohibition on theft.’ (Time, 24 Sept., p. 65)
VODKA-DRINKING FUNDAMENTALISTS?
Atta and the core group do not seem
to have been followers of the puritanical and fundamentalist Osama
bin Laden. According to the FBI, over the summer of 2001, the
suicide hijackers spent time in strip clubs in Las Vegas and Florida.
(Telegraph, 6 Oct., p. 3) Karen Armstrong, author of The
battle for God, Islam: a brief history, and Muhammad,
a biography of the prophet, wrote, "I must confess...
that I am puzzled by the terrorists of September 11, because they
are like no other fundamentalist that I have studied. It appears
that Muhammad Atta was drinking vodka before boarding the airplane.
Alcohol is, of course, forbidden by the Koran, and it seems incredible
that an avowed martyr of Islam would attempt to enter paradise
with vodka on his breath.
"Again, Ziad Jarrahi, the
alleged Lebanese hijacker of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania,
seems to have frequented nightclubs in Hamburg. Muslim fundamentalists
lead highly disciplined, orthodox lives, and would regard drinking
and clubbing as elements of the jahili, Godless society that they
are fighting to overcome." Armstrong says, "I have no
theory to offer, but would just like to note that these seem to
be very unusual fundamentalists indeed." (Guardian,
13 Oct. 2001)
Most tellingly, a crucial document
found in Atta’s luggage (accidentally not loaded onto his plane)
indicates that the author (either Atta or another core conspirator)
was not familiar with basic tenets of Islam, or concerned with
bin Laden’s ideology. The document, which sets out the final instructions
to the suicide hijackers, opens with an invocation including the
hijackers’ families. Robert Fisk notes that, ‘no Muslim - however
ill-taught - would include his family in such a prayer’. A Muslim
would also include the name of Mohammed immediately after invoking
God in the first line of the prayer. No Muslim would need to actually
quote from the morning prayer, as familiar to Muslims as the Lord’s
Prayer is to Christians. Robert Fisk asks, ‘What Muslim would
write: "The time of fun and waste is gone"?’. Fisk also
points out that the document does not mention evicting US forces
from the Gulf, ending Israeli occupation of Arab lands, or the
overthrow of pro-US Arab regimes, bin Laden’s core concerns. (Independent,
29 Sept., p. 5)
It seems plain that the leaders
of the 11 September attacks were not Muslim fundamentalists, were
far from devout, and were in fact ignorant of many of the basic
tenets of Islam. The only document which has survived from their
conspiracy sets out no political agenda, and gives no trace of
the issues that Osama bin Laden has championed throughout the
Muslim world.
UNWITTING SUICIDES
FBI investigators concluded within
weeks of the attacks that 11 of the 19 hijackers did not know
they were on a suicide mission. "Unlike the eight ‘lead’
attackers, who were all trained pilots, they did not leave messages
for friends and family indicating they knew their lives were over.
None of them had copies of the instructions for prayer and contemplation
on the eve of the attacks and for ‘opening your chest to God’
at the moment of immolation, which FBI agents discovered in the
luggage of Mohamed Atta..."
"It is understood the FBI
has found evidence suggesting the 11 men expected to take part
in ‘conventional’ hijackings - with the planes flown to distant
airports, and the passengers and crew taken hostage while the
hijackers presented demands. Items found among the 11 men’s possessions
suggest they had been preparing themselves for incarceration.
One source said: ‘It looks as if they expected they might be going
to prison, not paradise.’ The FBI analysis concludes the 11 may
have believed the purpose of the hijackings was to free the perpetrators
of previous extremist terrorist attacks on the United States,
such as the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993." (Observer,
14 Oct. 2001)
Interestingly, bin Laden says in
his video ‘confession’ that the ‘brothers’ he sent to take part
in the attacks ‘didn’t know anything about the operation... we
did not reveal the operation to them until... just before they
boarded the planes’, though they did knew it was ‘a martyrdom
operation’. (Newsweek, 24 Dec., p. 19)
INTELLIGENCE FAILURES
Incidentally, there seems to have been
a string of intelligence failures regarding the 11 September conspiracy.
Atta’s home (used by two other core members) was nearly placed
under surveillance a year before the attacks - German federal
intelligence apparently asked the Hamburg state intelligence service
to observe 54 Marienstrasse, but this was never carried out. Atta
was apparently not a typical, inconspicuous, student ‘sleeper’
agent, but a regular ‘club class’ air traveller to a number of
different countries. German intelligence monitored at least one
conversation mentioning Atta between Muslim extremists in Hamburg
- in 1999. (Telegraph, 24 Nov., p. 16) Atta had been monitored
by the Egyptian secret service before the attacks took place,
according to a German TV documentary, and was even monitored by
the FBI ‘for several months in 2000, when he was frequently in
Frankfurt and had allegedly bought large quantities of chemical,
possibly to make explosives.’ (Financial Times, 24 Nov.,
p. 4) ‘It said the US agents who are believed to have
watched Atta between January
and May 2000 did not inform the German authorities about their
investigation.’ (Guardian, 25 Sept.)
On 23 Aug., over two weeks before
the attacks, the CIA cabled the FBI with the names of two men,
Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, who took part in the attacks.
Al-Midhar had been videotaped months before meeting a suspect
in the bombing of the USS Cole, and the CIA advisory was "not
a routine matter," an official familiar with the events told
the Washington Post. ‘The FBI sought the men in New York
and Los Angeles but they had been living in San Diego... The FBI
failed to locate the men before they boarded the plane that crashed
into the Pentagon.’ (Guardian, 25 Sept.)
Actually on the day of the hijacking,
nine of the hijackers were ‘selected for security screenings that
morning, including two who were singled out because of irregularities
in their identification documents’. Six hijackers had their luggage
swept for explosives or unauthorised weapons. (Washington Post,
2 Mar. 2002, p. A11)
Early depictions of the suicide
hijackers as meticulous planners working undetectably, inconspicuous
‘sleeper’ terrorists rigorously avoiding surveillance, were misleading.
The conspirators were not supermen. They could have been thwarted.
CONCLUSION
A Gallup poll in the aftermath of the
attacks suggested various responses to 11 September, including
military strikes against known terrorist organisations ‘even if
is not clear who caused the attacks last week’ (23% support in
the US, 13% support in the UK). The overwhelmingly popular option
was ‘the US and its allies should only conduct military strikes
against the terrorist organisations responsible for the attacks
on the US even if it takes months to identify them’ (62% support
in the US, 82% in the UK). (Telegraph, 20 Sept., p. 2)
This was not the path followed.
In the event, the US and UK conducted
not only ‘military strikes’, but a war, without compelling
evidence of exactly who was responsible. Bin Laden’s video ‘confession’,
made in early Nov. 2001, was not available on 7 Oct. 2001, and
therefore could not have helped to justify the war which began
on that day.
Given the decentralised nature
of Islamic terrorism (and of the al-Qaeda network which makes
up one part of this movement), the unfundamentalist behaviour
and thinking of the leaders of the conspiracy, and the lack of
evidence of direction from bin Laden, there are serious questions
yet to be answered about the co-sponsors of 11 September.
Yet the nature and motivation of
the conspiracy that led to 3000 deaths is now off the agenda of
our leaders and the mainstream media. The ‘prime suspect’ is no
longer even mentioned by President Bush or Prime Minister Blair.
The al-Qaeda organisation and its affiliates are being attacked
in dozens of countries, but the reasons why people become willing
to support such an organisation, and to participate in Islamic
terrorism, are not matters for serious discussion. So long as
this is the case, it is impossible to deal with the root causes
of terrorism, or to prevent future atrocities of the kind committed
on 11 September. The victims of 11 September deserve more than
this.
ARROW
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