Posted on 09/26/2006 11:25:23 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -
The mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks helped lay the groundwork for the London subway bombings and a plot to strike Heathrow Airport, Pakistan's president says in his memoir.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's "In The Line of Fire," released Monday, also says that the United States paid Pakistan millions of dollars in bounties to hand over some of the nearly 700 al-Qaida suspects arrested in his country, including the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Among those in U.S. custody is ex-al-Qaida No. 3 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind captured in Pakistan in March 2003, two years before the London subway bombing.
Musharraf wrote that Mohammed was linked to the July 7, 2005, London subway bombings, and plans to attack Heathrow airport with hijacked passenger planes. The allegation is the first publicly linking Mohammed to the subway attacks, which killed 52 people and four bombers.
Mohammed would have had to initiate the plans for the London subway and Heathrow plots before his March 2003 arrest.
Musharraf said a suspect detained in Lahore in 2004 by Pakistani authorities had been ordered by Mohammed to carry out reconnaissance for possible attacks on Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf - a financial district of London - and the city's subway system.
Information on the unidentified suspect's laptop would later help provide a link between Mohammed and two of the four London transport system bombers, Musharraf wrote. The attacks on Heathrow and Canary Wharf did not take place.
"We had learned from KSM (Mohammed) that al-Qaida's planners were thinking seriously about bombing Heathrow Airport ... as well as London's subway system," Musharraf wrote.
The suspect, identified by Musharraf only as a computer engineering graduate born in Karachi, is believed to be Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, an al-Qaida computer expert who was arrested by Pakistani authorities. His whereabouts remain unknown.
Musharraf also wrote about the money paid to Pakistan by Washington for arresting and handing over al-Qaida suspects.
"We have captured 689 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars," he says, without specifying how much was paid.
Musharraf is scheduled to meet Wednesday with President Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai to seek ways to bridge their disagreements on the fight against Islamic militants, particularly along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier.
Pakistan, the United States and Saudi Arabia created an extremist "monster" by supporting Islamic groups fighting the Soviet Union's 1979-89 occupation of Afghanistan, Musharraf wrote.
"We had assisted in the rise of the Taliban after the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, which was then callously abandoned by the United States," he wrote.
It was within this vacuum that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terror network strengthened, thanks to the support of the Taliban's leader, Mullah Omar, he added.
Pakistan saw the Taliban as a means to end years of chaos in Afghanistan, which peaked during the 1992-96 civil war, wrote Musharraf, who came to power in a 1999 coup.
But after the Sept. 11 attacks, Musharraf wrote, he realized continuing to support the Taliban and have ties with militant groups would set Pakistan on a collision course with Washington.
Musharraf wrote that he weighed Pakistan's options, including the possibility of militarily countering any U.S. actions.
He also worried about nuclear-armed India, with which Pakistan has fought three wars since their 1947 independence from Britain, including two over the disputed Himalayan region of now divided Kashmir.
Musharraf wrote that he thus cut Pakistan's support for the Taliban, despite a possible backlash from radical Islamic groups in his country.
Musharraf conceded that al-Qaida and Taliban militants still operate in his country, while repeating his insistence that he has no knowledge of the whereabouts of top fugitives, including bin Laden and Omar.
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Mohammed is a terrorist.
BUMP!
Good post!
So Pakistan is our ally as long as the money for captured terrorists keeps flowing?
Keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer.....
Pakistan is a most important ally. Money...It's how you do business in that part of the world. Anything else is putting an ally like Pakistan at the terrorists mercy and at a great loss to us.
I vote for more water boarding!
LOL --- and SURF CITY played at full volume.
An Ally you have to buy is no ally.
I dont know why Musharriff wrote this little fable of his , but to me it shows the greed of Pakistan. Yes we paid: If thats what it took --fine. But Pakistan obviously sold these people in a form of terrorist slavery. If they had done the right thing they would have been glad to turn these people over, either that or tried them themselves.No they accepted the bounty, head tax and sold these people . I wonder, did they jack up the price according to how badly they thought we wanted certain individuals. I am glad of course that many of them are no longer in the terrorist business, but dont count me in as thanking the Paki's, they were well paid. IMO these tales of selling terrorists makes the Pakistan government look bad, and I still say the part about Colin powell telling them , they are with us ro against us and threatening pakistan is a flat out lie.
So what is your opinion of the Rosevelt program of pre WWII with Russia....not sure of the name...Lend Lease???
Crucial to defeating Germany/.
I am an ally of my employers every day. Does that make me less of an ally? I could not afford to be their ally if I didn't have a job, and plus working for them kind of puts me in a position to be their ally. Quit wishing for pure intentions and be thankful for positive results. I am.
Yep, Mushy sure has a lot of info on Al Q... guess so, since that's where a lot of the big wigs are.
Well said. Never trust Pakistan.
If I remember correctly Russia was in that war. IMO Pakistan is not at war with the Taliban.
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