The recommendations, which must still be approved by a military tribunal official, set the stage for the high-profile Al-Qaeda suspects to finally face justice almost a decade after the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

President Barack Obama’s administration last month abandoned plans to try the five in a civilian court just blocks from the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, felled by Al-Qaeda hijackers on September 11, 2001.

A letter sent to families of 9/11 victims said fresh charges against Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, and Mustapha Ahmed al-Hawsawi would be filed at Guantanamo on Tuesday.

It listed the charges as: “conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, hijacking aircraft and terrorism.”

Almost identical charges were filed in May 2008 but dropped when the Obama administration announced plans to try the 9/11 suspects in a civilian court in New York.

The post Charges Filed Against 9/11 Terror Suspects appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

US counter-terrorism official John Brennan recently told the media that Bin Laden had apparently been living in his prominent Abbottabad home for five to six years and that “he was in contact with some senior al Qaeda officials”. US Senator Carl Levin said that the Pakistani army and intelligence agencies have serious questions to answer about how Bin Laden managed to live so close to the central location of the Pakistani army for apparently so long. The Pakistani authorities have hit back, claiming that they warned the US about the Bin Laden compound two years ago. This has created considerable tensions between the US and Pakistan – tensions which really hide a darker and more troubling history that connects certain former employees of the Pakistani ISI with members of Al-Qaeda and the 9/11 hijackers. These former employees have not been officially regarded as 9/11 suspects by the US authorities.

On the 22nd of July 2004, United Press International reported that “On the eve of the publication of its report, the 9/11 Commission was given a stunning document from Pakistan, claiming that Pakistani intelligence officers knew in advance of the 9/11 attacks”. The report also alleged that the Pakistani ISI provided direct financial support to the 9/11 hijackers and was thus fully involved in the plot. Worryingly, the final report of the 9/11 Commission failed to mention this allegation, and barely refers to the ISI agency at all. Since 9/11, Pakistan has become an ally in the “war on terror”, an ongoing war that has also been continued by President Obama. Pakistan has received a lot of financial aid in the years since 9/11, amounting to approximately $20 billion dollars . This aid comes despite reports that elements of the Pakistani government, including the shadowy ISI, have been supporting and aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan. The counter-productive nature of this policy seems clear – yet it continues, despite the protestations of certain US officials. The issue of financing the Taliban may be bad enough; worse than this, however, are compelling allegations that point to the ISI directly providing money to the September 11th hijackers even as the CIA continued close ties with the agency.

In September 2006, former Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf stated that the US official Richard Armitage threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the Stone Age” during a conversation with Pakistan’s intelligence director. The alleged threat was made in the days following the 9/11 attacks and were apparently made as a consequence of Pakistan’s not choosing to participate in the “war on terror”. Ties to the Taliban were apparently severed – albeit only temporarily- by the Pakistani regime as a response to these alleged US threats, and this was met with approval by the Bush regime, who welcomed them as their new partner.

But serious questions remain about the involvement of the Pakistani authorities in the support and financing of Al Qaeda. The Family Steering Committee (FSC) of the 9/11 Commission was a group of 9/11 family members who spear-headed the campaign for the creation of the Commission to investigate the attacks, and who assisted the commission staffers with their work as well as monitoring them. On their website there remains a list of questions which the final report of the Commission failed to address or answer. In the case of the Pakistani ISI, some of the questions refer to the former Director of the agency, General Mahmood Ahmed. According to several media reports, the General was meeting with US officials in Washington between the 4th and 13th of September 2001. The FSC asked the 9/11 Commission to inquire about the details of the meeting with General Ahmed conducted by the House and Senate Intelligence Committee chairmen on September 11th. More importantly, they also asked the Commission if they could find out why the General ordered Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to wire $100,000 to the 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. This may seem like a serious allegation, even speculative – but it is no conspiracy theory. In June 2004, the New York Times reported that Lorie Van Auken, a member of the Family Steering Committee, “was irate” that the final report of the 9/11 Commission did not even mention General Mahmoud Ahmed’s alleged role in the $100,000 wire transfer to Mohammed Atta. Disturbingly, in 2006 the Pakistani newspaper The Friday Times published a report claiming that lobbyists from Pakistan gave thousands of dollars to members of the 9/11 Commission in order to try and get them to omit any information from the final report that might be damaging to the Pakistani authorities. This could perhaps explain why the 9/11 report does not address allegations against former members of the Pakistani ISI, especially that of General Mahmoud Ahmed and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.

The story of Saeed Sheikh is also highly compelling. He is currently being held in prison in Pakistan for the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl. He was originally sentenced to death for this crime back in July 2002, but he has since been kept alive and was even accused of plotting the death of General Musharraf from his jail cell in 2008. He has been linked not only to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban but also to the Pakistani ISI. In 2002, according to the online archive History Commons, the New York Times, India Today, the National Post and The Guardian newspapers all reported that Saeed Sheikh was working for the ISI and was well known to senior officers there. Several media reports have also detailed Saeed Sheikh’s close ties to Al-Qaeda, particularly from late 1999 to 2001. For example, Vanity Fair reported in August 2002 that Osama Bin Laden referred to Saeed Sheikh as “my special son”. On the 30th of September 2001, the Daily Telegraph reported that Sheikh had even apparently trained some of the 9/11 hijackers. In his 2003 book Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, author Rohan Gunaratna wrote about how Sheikh was able to establish an Al-Qaeda network in Dubai. Interestingly, several 9/11 hijackers arrived in Dubai between the 11th of April and the 28th of June 2001 – according to US officials – and purchased several travelers’ checks. It was from this location in August 2001that Saeed Sheikh was alleged to have sent Mohammed Atta $100,000, which ended up in two of Atta’s accounts in Florida. If Saeed Sheikh had an Al-Qaeda base in Dubai at the time, it is also possible that he could have been in contact with the hijackers when they passed through. Regarding the money transfers to Mohammed Atta, an unnamed senior US official told CNN in October 2001 that “U.S. investigators now believe Sheik Syed, using the alias Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad, sent more than $100,000 from Pakistan to Mohammed Atta”. In January 2002, the Press Trust Of India reported that the Indian authorities had informed the FBI that ransom money obtained by the Dubai mobster Aftab Ansari (in order to release a captured Calcutta businessman) was used to finance Mohammed Atta. Indian authorities named Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh as the paymaster who provided Atta with $100,000 via wire transfer. A wide range of world news media reported on the link between Atta and Omar Saeed Sheikh. Unfortunately, the story of the wire transfer has been largely buried and obfuscated by the Western media since the end of 2001.

On October 7th 2001, General Mahmoud Ahmed was demoted from his position at the head of the Pakistani ISI. The official reason was because he was apparently too close to the Taliban. However, the official reason is not credible especially given the fact that the remaining ISI officials continued to maintain their ties with the Taliban. On June 20th 2004, a member of the 9/11 Commission told the Los Angeles Times that before 9/11, Pakistani officials were “up to their eyeballs” in collaboration with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Yet, General Mahmoud Ahmed and other members of the Pakistani authorities were apparently only threatened by the US authorities if they refused to become partners in the “war on terror”. Was General Ahmed sacked because of his decision to order Saeed Sheikh to wire money to Mohammed Atta? If so, it is a great injustice to have the General remain free in Pakistan with no charges on his head. Saeed Sheikh remains in a Pakistani jail, but like the General he too has not been formally charged with suspicion of involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps the US authorities should seek to question these two men, rather than just kill them and ask questions later, as they did with Bin Laden. More importantly, there should be hard questions directed at the US authorities and the 9/11 Commission with regard to the way they have dealt with the ISI before and after 9/11. For the US authorities to simply threaten or scapegoat Pakistan now would be a grossly irresponsible act, since certain agencies of both governments have a lot of explaining to do.

The post Death of Bin Laden May Distract from a More Disturbing Story appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

The indictment charging self-professed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others was unsealed when US Attorney General Eric Holder referred the case to the Defense Department for military trials instead of trials at a US federal court in New York.

Holder said Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and Mustapha Ahmed al-Hawsawi could have been prosecuted in federal court and blamed Congress for imposing measures blocking civilian trials of Guantanamo Bay inmates.

They will be tried in military courts in the US naval base in southeastern Cuba.

The now-public details show that the United States, nearly 10 years after hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, reconstructed step by step the logistics of the five accused men.

They compiled bank transactions, flight records, visa applications, and dozens of telephone conversations to create the most comprehensive account of the chain of events before the attacks.

Implementation of the plan began in 1999, when Sheikh Mohammed (referred to as “KSM” by US officials) proposed to Osama bin Laden to use commercial airliners as missiles against US targets.

Until the last minute, according to the indictment, Sheikh Mohammed controlled the entire operation.

“From in or about December 1999, through in or about June 2000, Al-Qaeda selected operatives to pilot the airplanes to be hijacked and dispatched the operatives to the United States to obtain flight training and otherwise carry out the plot,” the indictment said.

Walid bin Attash, born in Saudi Arabia in 1979, traveled in first-class between Bangkok and Hong Kong, with a knife in his pocket “and approached the cockpit to test security measures.” He then took several other international flights, each time with his penknife undetected.

Meanwhile, Ramzi Binalshibh in Hamburg became friends with future hijacker Mohamed Atta. Binalshibh, a 38-year-old Yemeni, applied four times for a visa to the United States in 2000 but was denied each time.

So, at the request of KSM, Binalshibh became and intermediary between KSM and the future hijackers.

At the same time, from Dubai, KSM nephew Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, of Pakistan, provided flight simulation software to the hijackers and began transferring money to US accounts. Between January and June 2000, US investigators pinpointed 35 telephone calls between him and the hijackers.

Mustapha Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a 42-year-old from Saudi Arabia, was accused of being the principal financier of the attacks.

Bank transfers were made in small amounts so as not to arouse suspicion and different names were used each time. Tens of thousands of dollars arrived in US accounts, including for Zacarias Moussaoui, who was involved in the plot but was arrested a month before the attacks.

In the United Arab Emirates, al-Hawsawi monitored the operations and discusses them with KSM.

Between July 9-16, 2001, Ramzi Binalshibh met with Mohamed Atta in Spain. The two men “discussed, among other aspects of the plot, potential targets for the hijacking attacks.”

On July 23, KSM filed a visa application for the United States which was refused. At the end of August, he told bin Laden of the date for the attacks.

Between September 4-10, the men made their way from the UAE to Pakistan.

Walid bin Attash was with bin Laden on September 11, after which the Al-Qaeda leader ordered him to Tora Bora in Afghanistan to prepare for an offensive.

The five men, all of whom were arrested in Pakistan, could face the death penalty if convicted.

One year after the attacks, Pakistani police arrested Binalshibh at a home in a chic Karachi suburb. He was alone and didn’t put up a fight.

In March 2003, al-Hawsawi and Sheikh Mohammed were picked up by Pakistani special forces in a raid in Rawalpindi.

The indictment said the two men were “at a safe house where they possessed false identification and materials related to Al-Qaeda and the planning and execution of the September 11, 2001, attacks.”

Bin Attash and al-Aziz Ali were arrested by Pakistani police in April 2003.

All five men disappeared into secret prisons until September 2006, when they reappeared at Guantanamo.

Sheikh Mohammed is known to have been “waterboarded” or subjected to simulated drowning 183 times during his years in US custody, a method widely recognized as torture.

After his arrest in 2003 he was handed over to American agents who held him in secret prisons before sending him to Guantanamo.

Sheikh Mohammed also claims to have personally beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 with his “blessed right hand” and to have helped in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people.

The post US Reveals Evidence Against Alleged 9/11 Plotters appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

It must be said that Barack Obama deserves credit for attempting to show the world that truth will triumph and justice will prevail when even the most dastardly offenders are given their day in court. But faced with a shrill Republican-led opposition in Congress that succeeded in banning the trials on U.S. soil, the president reluctantly reversed the decision he had made upon taking office to halt military commission trials of those detained at Guantanamo. The announcement Monday by Defense Secretary Robert Gates rescinding the ban on the military trials also called for the indefinite imprisonment of those Guantanamo inmates thought to be too dangerous to be released but against whom the government doesn’t have enough evidence to obtain convictions. The shortcomings of the military commission trials was denounced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who said such proceedings fall “far short of core constitutional values by failing to provide judicial review of cases considered by the review board’ and to guarantee “meaningful assistance of counsel” to those accused.

But it is not the rights of the accused, important as they are, that should be the main concern here. Rather it is the right—indeed, need—of the American public to learn the truth about the motives, financing and methods of those who are alleged to have torn at the heart of our social fabric. What led 15 solid citizens of our ally Saudi Arabia to hijack those planes under direction of their Western-educated leaders is still murky. How did our allies in the war against Soviet communism in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, come to mastermind that savage attack on America? It is startling that, almost a decade after the attack, we still must rely for our understanding of what happened on a narrative informed not by the full disclosure revealed by the evaluation of a vetted record and robust cross-examination in open court of the key witnesses but rather by the unexamined and unquestioned reckoning of the facts supplied by the government officials who interrogated and indeed tortured the prisoners, most significantly Mohammed.

What the public has been led to believe about the events of 9/11 is most fully encapsulated in the report of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, appointed by President George W. Bush. But the Bush administration denied the commission access to the prisoners whose testimony, elicited after torture, provided the basic narrative as to how Sept. 11, 2001, came to be. That fatal flaw in the investigation was clearly conceded in a box on Page 146 of the official 9/11 Commission report containing a disclaimer that the key chapters “rely heavily on information from captured al Qaeda members” and admitting that the commission was dependent on hearsay reports from the interrogators as to what those witnesses actually said.

“We submitted questions for use in the interrogations but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process.”

Much of that story was derived from the waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was slated to be tried in Manhattan in civilian court until Congress derailed that possibility. As a result, the mystery of what led him from a small North Carolina Baptist college to fight alongside the United States in Afghanistan and then turn against this country may never be known—along with who financed and directed his journey and that of the hijackers he is said to have guided. For a decade, we have been obsessed with a terrorist enemy that we still barely comprehend. Ignorance is not bliss

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