Posted on 06/11/2002 9:46:24 PM PDT by Wallaby
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SEPTEMBER 11 HIJACKERS 'READY TO ATTACK BIG BEN' Tom Kelly, PA News, in New York
Press Association
HOME NEWS
June 11, 2002, Tuesday 09:20 AM Eastern Time
Suicide hijackers targeted Big Ben on September 11 but were thwarted after flights out of London were grounded following the US attacks, it was claimed today.
A group of al Qaida operatives were at Heathrow Airport waiting to take over a jet and slam it into the Houses of Parliament when British air space was closed, according to author Rohan Gunaratna.
A group of al Qaida operatives were at Heathrow Airport waiting to take over a jet and slam it into the Houses of Parliament when British air space was closed.
The plan was intended to show the international reach of al Qaida, he said. "This team assembled at Heathrow Airport on 911 to conduct an airborne suicide attack on the Houses of Parliament," Mr Gunaratna, author of Inside al Qaida, told CBS News in the US.
But the al Qaida operatives had not expected flights in the UK to be grounded after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, and left Heathrow without accomplishing their mission.
The alleged would-be Big Ben attacker, Afroz Muhammed, was arrested in India.
Security agents in India showed documents to CBS that indicated he had confessed to the London hijack plan. Afroz has since retracted his confession.
Mr Gunaratna said Afroz attended flying schools in Britain, Australia and the US, and received money from al Qaida-connected sources.
"In terms of who recruited him, how he was recruited, where he was sent for training, it very clearly demonstrates that he was an al Qaida member and this was his intention."
"The Americans should have known that the terrorist organisation that was behind Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, that trained him, that supported him - this organisation would never abandon that idea."
Mr Gunaratna said he studied intelligence documents and had access to serving and former members of Osama bin Laden's terror network when writing the book.
He said his study revealed that al Qaida had a "lose and learn" doctrine.
The terror group was prepared to lose operatives like Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Centre bomber, in order to learn how to carry out such an attack successfully the next time.
"The Americans should have known that the terrorist organisation that was behind Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, that trained him, that supported him - this organisation would never abandon that idea," he told CBS.
VRN
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