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 ]

[irish laddie]

I,d say this is a dud.surely if they wanted an aircraft filled with fuel they would hardly go after a london-manchester flight? :)

[Steepclimb]

Very implausible, most obviously because one of the targets was Tower Bridge,
Tower Bridge?
Parliament makes sense but Tower Bridge is hardly a plausible target. There are any number of more likely targets than a mere bridge.

Sounds like a fantasy merchant.

[ 06 December 2001: Message edited by: Steepclimb ]

[Raas767]

We will most likely never know if there where other targets on 9/11. I have heard,however, from a few people that AA had two other airplanes with hijackers onboard that never left the ground due to the ATC shutdown. One was a 777 bound for LHR, the other a 767 bound for LAX. Both from JFK. The supposed hijackers ran off before they could be questioned after the airplanes returned to the gate. Again, this story has never been confirmed.

[sky9]

Follow up report in Friday's DT saying that the info was incorrect.

[Wig Wag]

Here is the report which corrects the allegation. Specifically the Cabair records confirm the suspects location for the day.

>>London terror plot 'unfounded'
(Filed: 07/12/2001)

AN alleged September 11 plot by al-Qa'eda terrorists to hijack two aircraft and crash them into the Palace of Westminster and Tower Bridge has been dismissed by British intelligence sources.

A trainee pilot in custody in India is said to have confessed to being part of the suicide hijack plan, which was abandoned at the last minute when the conspirators panicked on hearing reports of events in New York.

Mohammed Afroz, 25, from Bombay, made his confession after two months in custody during which he underwent "sustained interrogation".

He is alleged to have said that eight hijackers planned to take over two London to Manchester flights on the afternoon of September 11 and divert them to their targets.

The Indian authorities said he was part of a wider conspiracy that also planned attacks on targets in Melbourne, Australia and Parliament House in Delhi.

But British intelligence sources said they had investigated and ruled out many of the allegations against Afroz.

One source suggested that Afroz's confession may have been coerced from him and added that Indian intelligence had been "peddling a lot of funny stories" in recent months.

Afroz was a student at Cabair College of Air Training based at Cranfield Airport, Bedford and was in Britain on September 11. But college records indicate that he attended his course and was present throughout the day.<<

There is a game being played where peoples fears are heightened by alarming stories Definitive intelligence seems to correct them a few days later.