New Delhi: A recently declassified CIA intelligence brief has revealed that al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden intended to attack India and several other countries years before the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001.
As per the top secret document prepared for US president Bill Clinton in 1998, the al-Qaeda network identified India and Pakistan as possible targets for terrorist strikes.
The revelation is part of a major CIA release which came on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. On September 11, the CIA made 71 intelligence reports public. It was the largest release of 9/11-related records, as reported by Hindustan Times.
The brief, titled “Bin Ladin Terrorist Network Still a Threat” and dated August 28, 1998, said that the terrorist intended to attack several countries, including India and Pakistan.
He planned attacks in “Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula – especially Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen – India, Pakistan, Uganda, and possibly Nigeria”, the report states.
The brief also said US officials had helped arrest bin Laden operatives preparing attacks in Tirana, Albania, and possibly Baku, Azerbaijan.
While the document does not detail any specific attack plan for India, it shows that US intelligence assessed India and Pakistan as countries where Laden’s network intended to carry out attacks, more than three years before 9/11.
This warning came weeks after the August 7, 1998, US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which killed 224 people and brought bin Laden and al-Qaeda firmly into the focus of US counterterrorism officials.
India faced a major terror attack three years later. On December 13, 2001, terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) stormed the Parliament complex in New Delhi, barely three months after the September 11 attacks in the US.
Nine people, including security personnel and a gardener, were killed in the attack on the Indian Parliament. All five attackers were also killed.
Pakistan later became deeply intertwined with the US hunt for Laden and the al-Qaeda network. The CIA’s 9/11 records show that US intelligence continued to monitor Laden’s activities and his relationship with the Taliban. A later CIA assessment in June 2000 was specifically titled “Pakistan pressing Bin Ladin network.”
Laden ultimately spent his final years hiding in Pakistan. In 2010, intelligence linked one of his couriers to a compound in Abbottabad, near Islamabad. US forces killed him there in a raid on May 2, 2011.
The CIA records include a July 1998 brief on possible US attacks, a December 1998 warning about aircraft hijackings, and the August 6, 2001 brief titled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.”
On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four US passenger planes. American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower, followed by United Airlines Flight 175 hitting the South Tower. Both towers later collapsed.
American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 fought back against the hijackers before the plane crashed in Pennsylvania.
A total of 2,977 people, excluding the 19 hijackers, were killed.
