by Khaled Hamoud Alshareef
Also the report ignores the logical links between Al Qaeda and Malaysian power players who might be linked to the planning and facilitating of the attacks.
The Al-Qaeda Summit in Kuala Lumpur 2000 was a meeting of high-level members of Al-Qaeda, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from January 5 to January 8, 2000 that included Khaled al-Mihdhar among the attendees.
The meeting was held in the hotel room where Yazid Soufat was staying, a former Malaysian army captain and businessman.
The aim of the summit was to plan future attacks, which apparently included the USS4 Cole bombing plot in October 2000 and the events of September 11.
Among the attendees were Arab Jihadists who participated in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, including Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khaled al-Mihdhar and Tawfiq bin Attash.
Before the meeting, the U.S intercepted, a call from Al-Mihdar from Yemen regarding the flight arrangements. Osama bin Laden had called this number dozens of times. At the request of the CIA, the Malaysian authorities recorded the meeting on video, but without a Audio recording.
The men were also photographed when they left the meeting. American investigators did not identify the men until later allegedly.
Binalshibh’s attendance at the meeting was discovered by investigators looking at his credit card records.
Soufat was later arrested, but he denied that he knew any of the men and said that Hambali arranged the meeting.
The findings of the investigation do not add up and deeply troubling failures to follow basic guidelines of investigating standards on the Malaysian side.
A review of the FBI’s handling of intelligence information related to the September 11 attacks mentioned
“FBI has asserted that it learned in late August 2001 that Mihdhar and Hazmi were al Qaeda operatives and that they had traveled to the United States in January 2000.”
“In August 2001, the FBI also discovered that Mihdhar had entered the United States on July 4, 2001, purportedly for a month-long stay.”
“In late August, the FBI initiated an investigation to determine whether Mihdhar was still in the country and to find him. The FBI was still searching for him at the time of the September 11 attacks.”
The report did mention a multitude of flags that were either ignored or underminded.
The British Guardian journalist Martin Chulov mentioned in his lengthy investigation of bin Laden in his August 3, 2018 issue, by a British intelligence officer.
He said, “There is no doubt that (Osama bin Laden) chose Saudi citizens to implement the 9/11 conspiracy, and he was convinced that this would turn the West against his country … and he succeeded in setting off a war, indeed, if not the war he wanted.”
Also the report ignores the logical links between Al Qaeda and Malaysian power players who might be linked to the planning and facilitating of the attacks.
Between 1996-2000 Saudi Arabia and Egypt were engaged in a very aggressive crackdown on terrorism and extremist linked to Al-Qaeda.
The most logical explanation to Osama bin Laden’s decision, can be found in Lawrence Wright’s book the Looming Tower, issued in 2008.
As Osama was feeling the heat from the Saudi, Egyptian crackdown Osama resorted to setting up a group of his loyalists to work with a partner who no one would suspect (Malaysian government officials) to take the fight to the Americans on their home in a fashion that will hurt the American alliance with its most trusted partners in the Middle East – Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Khaled Homoud Alshareef holds PhD in Business and he earned Masters in Philosophy. He regularly tweets under @0khalodi0.
