Posted on 09/05/2002 4:36:40 PM PDT by Paul Ross
Top al Qaida leaders interviewed
International
Desk
Published 9/5/2002 6:06 PM
WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 (UPI) -- An Arabic language satellite television station Thursday previewed an interview with two top al Qaida leaders filmed in Karachi, Pakistan.
Khaled Shaikh Mohammad and Ramzi Binalshibh, who served in Osama bin Laden's network, spoke to the al Jazeera news channel from a hidden location in an interview that the station says will be continued next week.
Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, interviewed the two for its program "Top Secret," after al Qaida operatives brought the interviewer blindfolded to a Karachi apartment.
In the second part of the investigative program monitored in Washington by United Press International, the station says the two will speak publicly for the first time about last September's suicide hijacking attacks on New York and Washington.
Shortly after the attacks, in which four U.S. jetliners were hijacked and crashed into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in rural Pennsylvania, U.S. officials charged that bin Laden was the mastermind of the plot that carried out by cells of al Qaida. Just over 3,000 people died in the attacks.
The station said the two men described in detail how al Qaida planned and carried out the attacks on what they call "Holy Tuesday." The interviews were conducted recently, the station said. It did not specify when, and did not explain how video pictures of the blindfolded interviewer in a car and climbing the staircase to the apartment were shot.
In a statement distributed Thursday, al Jazeera said the men interviewed were the head of al Qaida's military committee and the coordinator of the Sept. 11 operation. Both are on the FBI's most-wanted list as well as being wanted by German authorities.
The "Top Secret," program also included interviews with Lyndon LaRouche, the controversial conspiracy theorist and editor of Executive Intelligence Review, French author Thierry Meyssan, who has penned a book questioning the U.S. government's account of the Sept. 11 attacks, former CIA chief of counter-terrorism operations, Vince Cannistraro, and the father of Mohammed Atta, who is thought to have been the leader of the 19 hijackers.
Copyright © 2002 United Press International
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