911: Was New York the only target?

[sky9]

Quote from todays Daily Telegraph.
Any comment?

A man arrested in India and linked to the al-Qa'eda network has confessed to planning suicide attacks in Britain, Australia and India around September 11, the Indian home minister said yesterday.

"We arrested him a month ago in Bombay and he has made some shocking confessions," L K Advani said in New Delhi. Al-Qa'eda, he said, had plans to hit the Houses of Parliament and Tower Bridge, the Rialto Towers in Melbourne, Australia, and Parliament House in Delhi with hijacked aircraft filled with fuel, as well as the targets in America.

Mr Advani said Mohammad Afroze, a Bombay resident, learnt to fly in Australia and England and underwent flight simulator training in Texas. Arrested on Oct 9, Afroze has been charged with criminal conspiracy to wage war against India, security officials told The Telegraph.

They said Afroze, along with seven other al-Qa'eda "cell members" from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan who had undergone pilot training in Australia, had booked themselves on two London-Manchester flights on September 11.

They planned to hijack the aircraft and crash them into Parliament and Tower Bridge, Afroze told security officials under sustained interrogation.

But as they waited at an airport cafe to board their flights, news of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington panicked Afroze and his companions. They all fled from the airport, and went their separate ways.

Ten days later Afroze arrived in Bombay where he changed hotels frequently. He was finally arrested on Oct 9.

Senior police officials said that British, American and Australian security agencies had not reacted to Afroze's arrest despite being informed about it nearly six weeks ago.
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F12%2F06%2Fwplan06.xml

[captchunder]

...booked themselves on two London-Manchester flights on September 11.


Ouch. And here was I thinking I was far less of a target doing short-haul, domestic routes with the lower fuel load. Now, where's that crash axe? :eek:

[Bono Vox]

sounds very dubious to me- doesn't fit with the american flight profiles at all. the us flights were trans-continental, loads of fuel etc.
even if you think that you don't need much fuel to take down a bridge, can you imagine that the guys who actually volunteer for these suicide missions would be put off by international coverage of their brothers' actions & successes- or inspired? and then, would they all have got cold feet at the same time? me thinks not!

and if they were booked on separtate flights to the same destination, they would be about an hour apart- i.e. the fate of the first one would be known and all the ensuing chaos would make a subsequent attack very unlikely.

[ 06 December 2001: Message edited by: Bono Vox ]

[sky9]

Bono Vox

We do have more than one airline on that route and they depart within 10 minutes of each other e.g. 1145: BA1392, 1155: BMI 588.

[sanjosebaz]

Not necessarily an hour apart... For instance, there is a BA flight to MAN at 1255 from LHR and one at 1300 from LGW. Admittedly, makes it less likely that they would both have panicked at the same time though. :eek: Sounds like a bunch of bull.


Sky9: Saw your reply after I submitted mine... sorry!! Actually, we are both wrong - the time in UK that they would have "seen NY and panicked" would have been around 1400. There are no London to MAN flights very close to that time. This definitely is beginning to sound implausible.

[ 06 December 2001: Message edited by: sanjosebaz ]