Posted on 10/27/2001 8:18:06 PM PDT by Ranger
The News - Jang
October 27, 2001
PARIS: Two Arab terrorists who assassinated the anti-Taliban military supremo Ahmad Shah Masood last month were well-trained and patient, a survivor of the attack told AFP Friday. Mohammad Fahim Dashti, a close associate of the slain commander, said the assassins had disguised themselves as Islamic experts working for an Islamic research centre, and not as journalists as reported earlier. "They spent 10 days with us calmly and patiently waiting, and never unnecessarily insisting on the interview," Dashti told AFP in an interview. "I think the terrorists had been trained for this mission for quite a long time."
Dashti was badly burned all over his body in the blast that killed Masood, another colleague and one of the terrorists in the Afghan northeastern town of Khwaja Bahauddin in September. He said he was shooting a video of the interview at the time. He said Masood was killed when the explosives strapped around the waist of one of the Arabs went off, and not by the explosion of their camera, as previously reported by the press.
"The camera's body is almost intact; only its lense is broken," he said. "The pictures later taken of the room showed that only two legs of one of them were intact," he said. One of the terrorists was killed instantly, while the second one was shot dead while trying to escape injured and to snatch a guard's rifle, Dashti said.
The Arab assassins, who claimed to be Moroccans holding Belgian passports, spent 10 days in the opposition stronghold of Panjshir valley 120-km north of Kabul before heading for Khwaja Bahauddin, he said. Dashti added that during this period, they were only talking of ordinary things. "They were patient because, I think, they did not want their cover to be blown," he said.
Dashti said he arrived in Paris last Monday for further medical attention after his initial treatment in neighbouring Tajikistan. During the ten minutes, when one of the terrorists was reading out his questions in English, he said he himself did not notice any strange move by the assassins to suggest they had an heinous intentions.
He said the last image of Masood he remembered was when he was holding his hand to his chin apparently trying to concentrate on the questions. "The cameraman was only around two meters away from (Masood) when the blast happened," he said.
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