Operation Holy Tuesday

[OneBlueSky]

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/english/0,1518,271523,00.html

"The two chief planners of September 11th have confessed, and the records of their interrogations can now be used to paint a precise picture of the events leading up to the terrorist attack. Their statements also reveal how Osama Bin Laden personally selected the suicide pilots from Hamburg.

"The prisoner no longer recalls precisely when he heard these words and in which of the many hideouts in the mountains bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, this single sentence uttered by Osama Bin Laden has burned itself into his memory, this decisive sentence, spoken in a soft and silky voice, that would ultimately become a death sentence for about 3,000 people: "Why do you use an ax when you can use a bulldozer?"

"It was this sentence that marked the beginning of operation "Holy Tuesday," as the men of the Al Qaeda terrorist network called the terrorist attack in which, on September 11, 2001, two passenger jets crashed into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon in Washington, while a fourth exploded in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani citizen, told his American interrogators that the "ax" to which Bin Laden referred was his own plan for an attack. In 1996, Mohammed proposed leasing a small charter plane, filling it with explosives, and crashing it into the headquarters of the American secret service agency, the CIA. His plan, however, represented little more than raising an ax to strike the hated enemy. Bin Laden preferred the "bulldozer" approach, in which his followers were to hijack several passenger jets and fly them into their targets as airborne bombs."

- much, much more . . .

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/english/0,1518,271523,00.html

[demodewd]

1. re: Khalid Sheik Mohammed

Why can't the world see Khalid Sheik Mohammed in person? We were told he was wisked away to an undisclosed location to be interrogated...but no cameras...nothing...makes me suspicious.

[DulceDecorum]

2. The fathers eat sour grapes,

and the children's teeth are set on edge.


(Filed: 03/03/2003)
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the senior al-Qa'eda terrorist arrested in Pakistan, was in American custody yesterday as intelligence officials raced against time to discover what he knows.
Within hours of his capture, the CIA flew him from Pakistan to an undisclosed third country, where he will not be entitled to the human rights guarantees of the American constitution.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/03/03/wterr03.xml


March 04, 2003
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is being projected by US officials and the army of so-called non-governmental counter-terrorism experts, who have sprung up since 9/11, as if he is the Field Marshal Montgomery or General Patton or General Rommel of Al Qaeda, but his case is getting curiouser and curiouser. Just like the earlier case about the kidnapping and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/mar/04raman.htm


March 10 2003
Two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, are being used by the CIA to force their father to talk.
Yousef al-Khalid, 9, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, 7, were taken into custody in Pakistan in September when intelligence officers raided a flat in Karachi where their father had been hiding.
<snip>
Mohammed, 37, is being held in solitary confinement at the Bagram US military base in Afghanistan. He is being subjected to "stress and duress" interrogation techniques.
He has been told that his sons are being held and is being urged to divulge future attacks against the West and reveal the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.
"He has said very little so far," a CIA official said on Saturday. "He sits in a trance-like state and recites verses from the Koran. But while he may claim to be a devout Muslim, we know he is fond of the Western-style fast life. His sons are important to him. The promise of their release and their return to Pakistan may be the psychological lever we need to break him."
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/09/1047144871928.html


US PRESIDENT BUSH IS TO DECIDE WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE PLANNERS OF SEPTEMBER 11th.
Where Binalshibh and Sheik Mohammed are currently being questioned is unknown. It is certain, however, that they are not being held in Guantanamo Bay. Otherwise, there are many rumors. They are said to be on a US warship, at the air force base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, or at Bagram, the US' main headquarters in Afghanistan. However, it is also possible that they are being held in a country where human rights and prohibitions on torture are not taken that seriously, a country that may be handling the dirty work for the Americans. US investigators refer to these kinds of places as "Hotel California."
US interrogators have never had any doubts about the purpose of their jobs. According to the CIA, it is in the national interest that everything that the two men know about Al Qaeda be extracted from them: "If they are silent, it will cost our blood." Even American politicians are uncomfortable about this ultimatum-like approach. Without specifically mentioning the word "torture," members of the intelligence committees in the US Congress have asked whether force is being used. "All I can say to that is that there is a before and an after September 11th," responded Cofer Black, former director of counterintelligence at the CIA and currently charged with the same duties at the State Department. He added that "we have taken off our kid gloves."
Omar al-Faruk, a sort of Southeast Asia representative of Bin Laden until his arrest, discovered exactly what this means. In his isolation cell in Bagram, the light was left on day and night, and Faruk was forced to squat on the floor at night. His interrogators would suddenly raise the temperature in his cell to a tropical 100°F and then drop it to an icy 10°F, continuing this cycle until he became willing to cooperate.
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/english/0,1518,271523,00.html