While al Qaeda had established itself among terrorism-watchers as a major threat to Western security, it had not permanently grabbed the headlines until the hijacking and use of jetliners as weapons on September 11, 2001. The 9/11 body count of just under 3,000 victims broke all records. Records for economic impact were also topped, including damage estimates in the billions and secondary effects on stock markets, which saw a $1.3 trillion loss in the days after the attacks. More than a hundred thousand jobs were lost. Significant financial and social costs were incurred from new and heightened security measures. The attacks led to the United States and like-minded nations invading two nations—Afghanistan and Iraq—believed involved in the attacks, or at least neck-deep in supporting some form of international terrorists. Preventive security measures— profiling, pat downs, magnetometers, U.S. creation of a new Cabinet Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration, and reorganization of the Intelligence Community—in response to the attacks were matched with terrorist adaptation of methods. Although “classical” hijacking was probably stopped—there are still rare instances—terrorists nonetheless tried to attack airliners with shoe and underwear bombs and binary explosives, and to use planes as methods to deliver bombs. The success of any of these methods would have added the event(s) to the 50 Worst list.
In the 1990s, al Qaeda tended to take several years to develop spectacular 50 Worst -worthy attacks and rarely took credit for the attacks. Post9/11 affiliates became far more ready to claim responsibility, even for comparatively amateurish attacks and attempts.
With the main leadership—Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and a succession of third-in-commands whose life spans were comparable to fruit flies—of al Qaeda on the run or in graves following the incursions into their Afghan safe havens, the group continued its strategy of evolving rather than giving up. The group soon created a series of offshoots, some with formal franchise arrangements with al Qaeda in their names— al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, etc.—and some with extensive ties but no official commandand-control agreements, such as Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and various Philippine groups. Still other cells trained and sometimes obtained weapons from al Qaeda and Taliban remnants, then went on to conduct their own independent operations. Yet other lone wolves who on occasion had met with some flavor of al Qaeda leaders or franchisees, or were merely “selfradicalized” by studying the writings and YouTube videos of al Qaeda, popped up around the world. While the latter are in theory especially difficult to find, inept operational tradecraft of the loners, support for societal stability of peaceful Muslim communities who were quick to point out potential miscreants to government officials, and patient sting operations led to foiling numerous plots that would otherwise have added to the list of 50 Worst.
International revulsion at the 9/11—and later 3/11 and 7/7—attacks led to an extensive coalition working to “find, fix, and finish” terrorists around the world. This in turn led to the arrests of thousands of terrorist suspects, including numerous “high value” terrorists, who were initially held in local prisons before being turned over to U.S. authorities. The cooperative efforts were so successful in taking terrorists off the streets that the United States was faced with a growing inventory problem. It was at least temporarily resolved with the opening of a terrorist detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay military base on Cuban shores. The detention without trial of scores of major threats to security caused constant tension between civil libertarians and potential prosecutors regarding the ultimately juridical disposition of these individuals. As of this writing, the debate continues.
As in earlier decades, the worst of the 2000s included attacks against transportation modes—planes, trains, ships—and symbolic soft targets, including mosques, schools, and theaters. Body counts, particularly of those who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, continued to rise. While the literature of academic studies of terrorism debates whether “everything changed” after 9/11—and most garden variety attacks continued to mimic previous patterns of few casualties and exit strategies for the terrorists—suicide bombings and tactics difficult to defend against continued to increase in popularity. That said, the worst for this decade, except for occasional Chechen barricade-and-hostage situations causing hundreds of deaths, shows a virtual extinction of end-game calculations by the terrorists. Those that conducted more spectacular incidents were looking to kill, not bargain. Hostage-takers tended to go for a quick headline, then kill the hostages, rather than wait patiently, sometimes years, for negotiations to develop, as had been the case with Hizballah in the 1980s.
Women appeared more frequently as suicide bombers. RAND researcher Karla Cunningham determined that by mid-2008, female suicide bombers were responsible for 21 attacks in Iraqi markets and other Shi’ite civilian venues. State Department intelligence analyst Heidi Panetta added that between 2005 and 2010, women conducted more than 50 suicide attacks in Iraq, accounting for 10 percent of the group’s attacks in-country. Between 2002 and 2012, women conducted half of the suicide bombings in Chechnya, Turkey, and Sri Lanka, including some of the 50 Worst in Russia. Some observers suggested that this is a generational shift in how religious-based radical women now participate in their struggles against established authority. While women have previously been heavily involved in attacks—including in Morocco, Palestine, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Japan, Western Europe (especially the 1970s-era groups led by women, including the Petra Kraus Group in Switzerland, the Baader-Meinhof Group in West Germany, and the Japanese Red Army of Fusako Shigenobu)—the lack of an exit strategy is new. Women also appeared in the legions of lone wolves who were caught, including Colleen R. La Rose (alias Jihad Jane) and Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, who attempted to support the jihad at the turn of the decade. Other U.S. women were indicted for supporting terrorists in Somalia, Afghanistan, Egypt, and the United Kingdom.
Terrorists developed use of the Internet, but not in the way that pundits had initially thought. Rather than conduct cyber-attacks that could potentially cripple infrastructure and economies of “the far enemy,” al Qaeda and other terrorists found that the Internet was helpful in recruitment and directing overall strategies from afar. While the centralized al Qaeda was rapidly becoming a bad memory, individuals flocked to the jihadi websites to “self-radicalize,” publicize their exploits through posted videos of attacks, publish eulogies for their fallen comrades, and share operational tips. Rather than continue with multiyear meticulously planned attacks that had been the watchword of al Qaeda in the 1990s and early 2000s, the new lone wolves could continue the fight, with the enemy now pecked to death by ducks, rather than by one or two spectacular hits.
Finally, although the body and incident counts did not reach the high bar of the worst, a spate of beheadings in Iraq marked a new phase in terrorist violence during the decade. Begun initially as a headline-grabbing threat against American hostages, the tactic soon proliferated to threats against Kenyans, Turks, Somalis, Egyptians, Filipinos, Iraqis, and the gruesome murders of Nepalese. The beheaders again broke previous mores with their callous disregard for what had heretofore been commonly accepted norms of decency, and appalled publics wondered what the next group could devise that could be even worse. They soon had their answer when Chechen terrorists shot to death hundreds of fleeing children on their first day of school.
Overview: Osama bin Laden’s fatwa to attack Americans around the world proved troubling to U.S. policymakers, but did not become of general public concern until the bombings of the two U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in August 1998 and the bombing of a U.S. Navy destroyer in Aden in 2000. While other terrorist groups were content to set off late-night bombs with no casualties, with these two operations, al Qaeda established itself as the world’s preeminent terrorist group, willing to tackle complex terrorist operations. American determination to bring the perpetrators to justice has lasted more than a decade as of this writing, with debates continuing over the venue for the trial of those detained for this and other attacks.
Incident: On October 12, 2000, a 20-foot Zodiac boat laden with explosives came alongside the 8,600-ton USS Cole, a 505-foot Arleigh Burkeclass guided-missile destroyer, and detonated, ripping a 40 × 40 foot hole in the hull’s half-inch-thick armored steel plates near the engine rooms and adjacent eating and living quarters, killing 17 American sailors and injuring another 44. No Yemenis were killed in the Aden port blast.
A Syrian-born cleric living in the United Kingdom, Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, said that the Islamic Army of Aden (alias Aden-Abyan Islamic Army) of Yemen had claimed credit.
Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh told CNN that some detainees belonged to the Egyptian al-Jihad, whose leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was with bin Laden in Afghanistan. Saleh said a 12-year-old boy told investigators that a bearded man with glasses gave him 2000 rials ($12) and asked him to watch a four-wheel drive vehicle parked near the port on the day of the attack. The man took a rubber boat off the top of the car and headed into the harbor, never to return. The car led investigators to a modest house in the Madinet al-Shaab suburb of Aden.
On October 16, Yemeni investigators discovered bomb-making material in an apartment used by individuals believed involved. Yemeni security said they were non-Yemeni Arabs; others said they were Saudis who stayed for six weeks in a house near Aden’s power station. Another house, close to the Aden refinery and oil storage facilities in the al-Baraiqa neighborhood, was discovered by October 21. The suspects apparently had briefly left and then reentered Yemen before the bombing. They had parked a fiberglass boat in the driveway; the boat was now missing. Police tracked the car to a house in al-Baraiqa, or Little Aden, west of Aden.
The Navy revised its theory of the bombing on October 20, saying that the destroyer had been moored for two hours and was already refueling when the bomb boat came alongside. The boat blended in with harbor workboats and was not suspected by the gun crews on the ship.
By October 24, the investigators were looking at three safe houses that served as the terrorists’ quarters in Little Aden, workshop in Madinet ash-Shaab, and lookout perch in the Tawahi neighborhood. A lease for the lookout apartment was signed by Abdullah Ahmed Khaled al-Musawah. Binoculars and Islamic publications were found in the apartment. The same name was found in a fake ID card in personal documents seized in the safe houses. Yemeni investigators detained employees of the Lajeh civil registration office in the northern farming region. Investigators looked at a possible Saudi connection—one of the individuals had a Saudi accent. Others looked at the mountainous province of Hadramaut—one suspect used a name common to the area. The press also indicated that the terrorists’ wills dedicated the attack to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
On October 25, Yemeni president Saleh said that the bombing was carried out by Muslims who fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and then moved to Yemen. Egyptian Islamic Jihad terrorists affiliated with bin Laden remained the key suspects; a witness identified one of the bombers as an Egyptian. Yemeni authorities arrested Islamic activists originally from Egypt, Algeria, and elsewhere, as well as local Yemenis. A local carpenter confessed that he had worked with two suspects in modifying a small boat to hold explosives and helped them to load the explosives on board. He had rented the suspects the building where they prepared the boat. A Somali woman who owned a car used by the suspects to haul the boat was questioned. Yemeni investigators believed the terrorists had given her money to buy the car.
The Taliban in Afghanistan said that bin Laden was not responsible. Osama bin Laden welcomed the attack.
Yemen arrested four men living in Aden on November 5 and 6 after tracing them via phone records that showed that they had been in contact with the suspected bombers. Officials in Lahej had provided the bombing suspects with government cars for use in Aden. The bombers knew the officials from their time together in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
On November 11, Yemeni investigators said that at least three plots against U.S. targets in Yemen had failed in the past year. Yemeni officials said a detainee claimed that terrorists had planned to bomb the U.S. destroyer USS The Sullivans during refueling in Aden on January 3, 2000. The explosives-laden small boat sank instead from the weight of the explosives.
On November 16, Yemeni prime minister Abdel-Karim Ali Iryani said that the two Yemeni bombers were veterans of the Afghan war. One was a Yemeni born in the eastern province of Hadramaut. (Osama bin Laden had Yemeni citizenship because of his father’s birth in the Hadramaut region.)
On November 19, Yemeni authorities said that they had detained “less than 10” suspected accomplices out of the more than 50 people still held for questioning.
An explosives expert reconfigured the charge using lightweight C-4 plastique. The Yemen Observer reported that the fiberglass boat was brought in from another country.
On November 21, U.S. officials said that the bombing appeared to be linked to the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. A composite sketch of one of the bombers appeared to match that of a man wanted for questioning in the Africa bombings.
The State Department announced on December 7 that it supported Yemen’s decision to prosecute three and possibly six Yemeni suspects in January, following the end of the holy month of Ramadan. One of them, Fhad al-Qoso, reportedly told investigators that an associate of bin Laden gave him more than $5,000 to finance the Cole attack’s planning and video-taping of the suicide bombing. Suspect Jamal al-Badawi admitted that he was trained in bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and was sent with bin Laden’s forces to fight in Bosnia’s civil war. He was believed to have obtained the boat. Yemen had also identified Muhammad Omar alHarazi, a Saudi born in Yemen, as a planner of the attack and a member of al Qaeda. He may also have played a role in the truck bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998.
On January 30, 2001, ABC News reported that U.S. African embassies bombing defendant Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali allegedly told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1998 about a plan for a rocket attack on a U.S. warship in Yemen.
On February 17, 2001, Yemen detained two more suspects when they returned from Afghanistan.
Bin Laden applauded the attack on February 26, 2001, saying the Cole was a ship of injustice that sailed “to its doom.” His comments were made at a family celebration in Afghanistan and broadcast on Qatar’s satellite channel Al Jazeera. He recited a poem to celebrate the January marriage of his son, Mohammed, in Qandahar, saying “In Aden, the young man stood up for holy war and destroyed a destroyer feared by the powerful.” He said the Cole sailed on a course of “false arrogance, self-conceit, and strength.”
On March 31, 2001, Yemeni police announced the arrests of several more suspects believed to be Islamic militants. The main suspect apparently fled to Afghanistan. Ali Mohammed Omar Kurdi was arrested; his house had been searched the previous day.
Yemen arrested five suspects with ties to Islamic terrorist cells on April 14 and 15, 2001, bringing the total in custody to 28. Two jailed suspects had informed security officials about terrorist cells operating in the country. The cells had two or three members each and were directed by leaders of Yemen’s Islamic Jihad (YIJ) who were based in several countries outside Yemen, including Afghanistan. The cells assisted non-Yemeni Arabs with ties to YIJ by providing forged Yemeni passports, safe houses, and information on Yemeni security.
A 100-minute videotape made by Al-Sahab Productions (The Clouds) circulated in Kuwait City by Muslim terrorists shows bin Laden for several minutes and suggests that his followers bombed the USS Cole . His followers training at the Farouq camp in Afghanistan included them singing “We thank God for granting us victory the day we destroyed Cole in the sea.”
On October 26, 2001, Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, 27, a Yemeni microbiology student and active member of al Qaeda, was handed over to U.S. authorities by Pakistani intelligence, according to Pakistani government sources. Pakistan bypassed the usual extradition and deportation procedures. He was the first suspect captured outside Yemen. He arrived in 1993 in Pakistan from Taiz, Yemen, to study microbiology at the University of Karachi. He was asked to leave in 1996 after failing to qualify for the honors program in which he had enrolled. Pakistani authorities arrested him later that year in connection with the November 1995 bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, but he was released without being charged. He was brought to Karachi International Airport in a rented white Toyota sedan by masked members of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, and handed over to U.S. officials who put him on a Gulfstream V jet. Government authorities detained two other Yemeni university students with ties to Mohammed.
On January 29, 2011, Yemen announced it had tracked down Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal and Qaed Salim Sunian al-Harithi, wanted for questioning in the case.
After a $250 million repair, the USS Cole returned to service on April 14, 2002.
On November 3, 2002, a Hellfire missile hit a car in Yemen carrying a group of al Qaeda terrorists, killing all six of them, including Abu Ali al-Harithi, a Cole suspect. Around that time, authorities captured a suspected planner of the Cole attack, al Qaeda member Abd-al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was believed to have also planned the USS The Sullivans attack and the thwarted attack on U.S. and U.K. warships in the Strait of Gibraltar in 2002.
On April 11, 2003, 10 of the main suspects, including Jamal al-Badawi, escaped from an Aden prison.
On May 15, 2003, a federal grand jury indicted on 50 counts Jamal al-Badawi and Fahd Quso; they faced the death penalty. The indictment named as unindicted coconspirators Osama bin Laden; Saif al-Adel, head of al Qaeda’s military committee; Muhsin Musa Matwalli; A bd-al-Rahim al-Nashiri; and Tawfiq bin Attash. On July 7, 2004, a Yemeni court charged Nashiri and five other Yemenis in the bombing. On September 29, 2004, a Yemeni judge sentenced Nashiri and Badawi to death.
On February 3, 2006, 23 al Qaeda convicts, including Badawi, broke out of a Sana’a prison. Yemeni forces recaptured him on July 1, 2006. Yemen freed him on October 25, 2007. He remained on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.
On March 12, 2007, Tawfiq bin Attash told a U.S. military tribunal in Guantanamo that he organized the USS Cole attack and the 1998 U.S. African embassies bombings.
On July 25, 2007, a U.S. judge ordered Sudan to pay circa $8 million to the families of the 17 dead sailors. In mid-April 2010, another 61 grieved relatives sued Sudan for $282.5 million.
Fahd al Qoso reportedly died in an air strike in Pakistan in October 2010, although a photo of him surfaced afterward.
In April 2011, Nashiri was charged by U.S. military prosecutors with murder, terrorism, and other violations of the laws of war regarding the USS Cole attack and others.
As of late 2013, many of the accused were held in Guantanamo Bay military prison, awaiting trial.
Overview: And then the world changed forever. Every American who lived through that day can tell you where they were when they heard the news. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people from more than 80 countries. American response to the attacks included a massive reorganization of the U.S. government, creation of the 180,000-person Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and a host of airline passenger screening measures. The U.S. military and a coalition of the willing soon flushed al Qaeda and the Taliban from the safety of Afghanistan. Suspicion of Iraqi involvement with al Qaeda led the Bush administration to invade Iraq in 2003 as part of the War on Terrorism.
Incidents: On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four U.S. air liners and crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center (WTC), the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.
American Airlines Flight 11. A B-767 carrying 92 people, including 9 flight attendants and 2 pilots, and traveling from Boston’s Logan International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport was hijacked shortly after its 7:59 a.m. takeoff by terrorists armed with box cutters and knives. The plane was diverted over New York and crashed into New York City’s 110-story WTC North Tower at 8:45 A.M., killing all on board. A fireball engulfed the tower as millions watched on television, certain they were seeing a horrible accident. Dozens of people jumped out of WTC windows. The building collapsed at 10:29 A.M., sending a 10-story cloud of smoke and ash throughout Manhattan. The fires burned for weeks.
The hijackers were identified as Mohamed Atta, Waleed M. Alshehri, Wail M. Alshehri, Satam M. A. al Suqami, and Abdulaziz Alomari. In February 2001, Atta inquired about crop dusters at Belle Glade State Municipal Airport in Belle Glade, Florida. (This piece of information, developed in September 2001, led the United States to ground all crop dusters in the country in hopes of stopping a possible chemical–biological attack.) The terrorists apparently had been told to blend in with U.S. society, not appearing to be too devout as Muslims and cut their beards to U.S.-style lengths.
United Airlines Flight 175. A B-767 flying from Boston’s Logan International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport with 65 people, including 7 flight attendants and 2 pilots, was hijacked shortly after its 7:58 a.m. takeoff by terrorists armed with box cutters and knives. The plane was diverted across New Jersey, pulled sharply right, and just missed crashing into two other airliners as it descended toward Manhattan. The hijacker maneuvered to avoid colliding with a Delta flight; a third U.S. Airways aircraft descended rapidly after being notified of an imminent collision. United Airlines flight 175 crashed into New York City’s 110-story WTC South Tower at 9:05 A.M. The second crash was captured on television, which was covering the North Tower fire, further horrifying millions. No one on board survived the crash. The building collapsed at 11:10 a.m., burying thousands, including hundreds of police officers and firefighters. At 5:00 P.M., WTC Building No. 7, a 47story tower, was the third structure to collapse. The rest of the WTC complex buildings collapsed during the day, and numerous neighboring buildings were damaged. The dust clouds from the collapsed buildings raced down major New York avenues.
The hijackers were identified as Marwan al-Shehhi of the United Arab Emirates; Fayez Rashid Ahmed Hassan al Qadi Banihammad, a Saudi; Ahmed Alghamdi; Hamza Alghamdi; and Mohand Alshehri. The “muscle” for the attacks had Saudi ties.
Circa 20,000 people were inside the WTC towers at the time of the attacks. Photos of the missing could be found throughout the streets of New York, taped onto walls, mailboxes, and telephone poles. The media ran dozens of biographies of the victims.
American Airlines Flight 77. A B-757 headed from Washington’s Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles with 64 people, including 4 flight attendants and 2 pilots on board, was hijacked shortly after its 8:10 A.M. departure. The hijackers, armed with box cutters and knives, forced the passengers and crew to the back of the plane. Barbara K. Olson, a former federal prosecutor and prominent television commentator who was married to Solicitor General Theodore Olson; a Senate staffer; three DC school children; three teachers on an educational field trip; and a University Park family of four headed to Australia were ordered to call relatives to say they were about to die. The plane made a hairpin turn over Ohio and Kentucky and flew back to Washington, D.C., with its transponder turned off. It aimed full throttle at the White House but made a 270 degree turn at the last minute and crashed at 9:40 A.M. into the Pentagon in northern Virginia. The plane hit the helicopter landing pad adjacent to the Pentagon, sliding into the west face of the Pentagon near Washington Boulevard. The plane cut a 35-foot wedge through the building’s E, D, C, and B rings between corridors 4 and 5. A huge fireball erupted, as 30,000 pounds of jet fuel ignited. The federal government shut down within an hour; hundreds of local schools closed.
Officials determined that 189 people, including all of the plane’s passengers and crew, died, and scores were wounded. Dozens of Pentagon employees were hospitalized. The Pentagon crash displaced 4,800 workers, destroying 4 million square feet of office space. Virginia’s economy took a $1.8 billion economic loss and a sharp increase in unemployment, including the loss of 18,700 jobs from the temporary closing of Reagan National Airport.
The hijackers used the names Hani Hanjour, Majed Moqed, Nawaf Alhazmi, Salem M. S. Alhazmi, and Khalid al-Midhar. In January 2000, Nawaf Alhazmi and Midhar were videotaped meeting with operatives of the Osama bin Laden organization al Qaeda in Malaysia. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) put them on a watch list in August 2001, but the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and FBI were unable to find them.
United Airlines Flight 93. A B-757–200 flying from Newark International Airport to San Francisco’s International Airport with 45 people, including 5 flight attendants and 2 pilots, was hijacked sometime after its 8:01 A.M. departure by terrorists armed with box cutters. At 9:31 A.M., the pilot’s microphone caught screaming as two men invaded the cockpit. A hijacker got on the microphone to tell the passengers, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the captain. Please sit down. Keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb aboard.” The hijackers subdued the pilots, then forced several passengers to phone their relatives to say they were about to die.
Passengers saw two people lying motionless on the floor near the cockpit, with their throats cut. Passenger Jeremy Glick, a national judo champ, told his wife during a cell phone call that the passengers would go down fighting. He said the terrorists, wearing red headbands, had ordered everyone to the rear of the plane. Business executive Thomas Burnett Jr. said during four cell phone calls that the terrorists had stabbed and seriously injured one of the passengers. He later called to say that the passenger or pilot had died and that “a group of us are going to do something.” Todd Beamer indicated to a GTE colleague that the passengers were about to fight the terrorists, ending his conversation with “Let’s roll.” The plane made a hairpin turn over Cleveland and headed for Washington; some pundits believe that the plane was aiming at the White House. The plane crashed in Stony Creek Township, Pennsylvania, midway between Camp David and Pittsburgh and 14 miles south of Johnstown, at 10:06 A.M., killing all on board. Air Force fighter pilots were ordered to down the plane if it neared Washington, believed to be its intended target.
The hijackers were identified as Ziad Samir Jarrah, Ahmed Alnami, Ahmed Ibrahim A. al-Haznawi, and Saeed Alghamdi.
Epilogue. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies began the country’s most extensive investigation in history and quickly developed leads and detailed information about the hijackers and their supporters. Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization soon became the major suspect; bin Laden was linked to the previous bombing of the WTC on February 26, 1993. The hijackers were linked with those of several other hijackings that day. At least one hijacker on each plane received flight training in the United States, and several had received pilot’s licenses; others studied martial arts so that they could subdue the passengers.
The United Nations listed 86 countries as having lost its citizens in the attacks.
The monetary costs of the series of attacks were staggering. The American commercial airline system was grounded—for the first time in U.S. history—for several days, and many major airlines lobbied Congress for immediate assistance to prevent bankruptcy of the industry. On September 29, 2001, New York City officials estimated that cleanup and repair of WTC Ground Zero would cost $40 billion and take at least one year. That figure rose to $105 billion in early October 2001. The stock market lost $1.3 trillion in paper assets during the first week it was open after being closed the week of the attacks. The casualties were greater than those tallied from all international terrorist attacks recorded during the previous decade.
The world responded with an outpouring of sympathy, holding candlelight vigils, leaving thousands of flowers in front of U.S. embassies, and sending donations. Paris Le Monde’s editorial observed, “T oday, we are all Americans.”
The hijackers differed from the normal al Qaeda terrorists in Europe, who tended to be disaffected, poorly educated youths who lived in slums. Atta was a city planner; fluent in German, English, and Arabic; and who earned advanced degrees. German police tracked members of a cell created by the hijackers in Hamburg.
On November 14, 2001, the FBI concluded that Yemeni economics student Ramzi Binalshibh was meant to be the fifth hijacker on flight 93. The FBI concluded that Zacarias Moussaoui was not to be the fifth hijacker, but may have been part of a wave of chemical–biological weapons attacks. Germany indicted fugitives Binalshibh, Said Bahaji, and Zakariya Essabar, part of an al Qaeda cell that operated in Hamburg since 1999. In 2004, the FBI also noted that Moshabab Hamlan, a Saudi, was meant to be a hijacker but lost his nerve.
War on Terror. The coalition military retaliation began on October 7, 2001, around noon EDT, with U.S. and U.K. air strikes —principally cruise missiles —against command and control/radar air defense installations near Kabul, Herat, Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif, Kunduz, and Kandahar. U.S. troops remained in Afghanistan a decade later. Czech officials confirmed on October 27, 2001, that Atta had contact with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer, on a trip to the Czech Republic earlier in the year. This news led members of the Bush administration to advocate the invasion of Iraq as part of the War on Terror.
Key Prosecutions. On August 19, 2005, a German court convicted Mounir el-Motassadeq and sentenced him to seven years as a member of the Hamburg cell, but found him not guilty of more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder in the 9/11 attack.
On September 26, 2005, a Spanish court convicted and sentenced Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas to 27 years for conspiring with the hijackers.
On April 4, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder dropped the Manhattan civilian court option for the 9/11 trial and announced that key figures Khalid Sheik Muhammad, Ramzi Binalshibh, Walid Muhammad bin Attash, Amar al-Baluchi, and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi would be tried before a Guantanamo Bay military commission. Charges included conspiracy, murder, attacking civilians, intentionally causing bodily injury, destruction of property, terrorism, and material support for terrorism. As of late 2013, the accused were awaiting trial.
Finale. On May 2, 2011, U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6 raided a compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan, during the night and shot to death Osama bin Laden, whose body was given a Muslim funeral aboard the USS Carl Vinson before burial at sea.
Overview: Following the operational successes of the attacks against the U.S. African embassies, USS Cole, and 9/11 targets, radical Islamist groups were eager to establish some connection to the core al Qaeda leadership. Various types of relationships developed, including formal merger of a group with al Qaeda (as seen with Ayman al-Zawahiri’s joining of his Egyptian al-Jihad group to al Qaeda), franchises with formal bayat pledged to bin Laden (as seen with al Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic Maghreb, and in the Arabian Peninsula), and affiliates in the Far East (including Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) in Indonesia). JI conducted numerous attacks in the region, the most deadly of which were the Bali nightclub bombings. In the aftermath, Southeast Asian governments arrested most of the first generation of JI leaders.
Incident: On October 12, 2002, at 11:10 p.m., two bombs exploded at the Sari Club and Paddy’s, two Bali nightclubs popular with foreign tourists, on Legian Street near Bali’s Kuta Beach strip, killing at least 202 people, including 88 Australians, 4 French citizens, and at least 7 Americans, and injuring more than 300.
The first small bomb went off in front of Paddy’s disco. The second larger bomb was in a Toyota Kijang SUV in front of the Sari Club.
Victims represented 21 nationalities—including Canadians, Britons, Germans, Swedes, New Zealanders, Norwegians, Italians, Swiss, and French— from six continents. Four Americans, seven French citizens, and at least five Britons were injured. JI terrorists were suspected. The blast shattered windows 400 yards away and set alight numerous cars. It left a hole 6 feet deep and 15 feet wide and destroyed 20 buildings.
On October 17, 2002, local authorities summoned to Jakarta for questioning JI spiritual leader Abubakar Baasyir, 64. They wanted to discuss a series of church bombings by al Qaeda–linked militants. He collapsed and was hospitalized after a press conference. Jailed al Qaeda operative Omar al-Farouq told local investigators that Baasyir was involved in the bombings.
On November 5, 2002, Indonesian authorities arrested two suspects. Two days later, police released composite sketches of four other suspects. Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, an East Javanese car repairman and the owner of the Mitsubishi L-300 minivan that exploded, said he was part of the group. He was arrested at an Islamic boarding school, Al Islam, in Lamongan, where he had attended a lecture by Baasyir. Amrozi said he was involved in the August 2000 remote-controlled bombing of Philippine ambassador Leonides Caday’s house in Jakarta. He said the Bali bombings were “revenge for what Americans have done to Muslims.” He said he was trying to kill as many Americans as possible and that the terrorists were unhappy that large numbers of Australians had died instead. Amrozi said he had met with Riduan Isamuddin (alias Hambali), the leader of JI and al Qaeda’s leader in the region. He said he was also involved in the bombing of the Jakarta stock exchange in 2000 that killed 15 people and the October 12, 2002, bombing of the Philippine Consulate in North Sulawesi.
Amrozi claimed to have purchased a ton of ammonium chlorate in Surabaya, East Java. The seller was detained by police. Amrozi led police to a home in Denpasar, Bali, where explosive residue was found.
Amrozi’s older brother, Mukhlas Amrozi (alias Ali Ghufron), was a JI operative wanted for the bombing. Police were seeking three other relatives, including two other brothers belonging to JI. Police believed Mukhlas was the Malaysia chief of JI and was involved in a failed plot to blow up pipelines that supply Malaysian water to Singapore. Younger brother Ali Imron was believed to have helped detonate the car bomb. Mukhlas attended an Islamic boarding school founded by Baasyir. Brother Ali Fauzi was also wanted in connection with the bombing. Brother Khozin founded Al Islam, the Islamic boarding school.
On November 10, 2002, police detained Tafsir, whom they said had driven Amrozi in his Mitsubishi L-300 van to Bali.
On November 11, 2002, Indonesian police arrested a forest ranger in Tenggulun, Komarudin, on suspicion of storing weapons and explosives for Amrozi. Police found two canisters, one of which contained five weapons, including two M-16s and an AK-47.
Amrozi told police that Imam Samudra (alias Hudama) asked him to buy the chemicals to make the bomb.
Meanwhile, police named four new suspects—Samudra, already in custody one, and three of his brothers (Umar, Idris, and another Umar), who remained at large. Amrozi claimed that he, Samudra, and another man named Martin met more than once in Solo, Java, to discuss the bomb plan. Amrozi said Idris gave him more than $5,000 in U.S., Singaporean, and Malaysian currency.
On November 17, 2002, police said a computer engineer from West Java, Imam Samudra, was the ringleader. The radical intellectual had received arms training in Afghanistan. The JI member had helped build the bomb. In a meeting in central Java on August 8, 2002, he decided to target the Sari Club in hopes of killing Americans. Police said the man suspected of setting off the car bomb was Amar Usman (alias Dulmatin), an electronics expert from central Java. On November 22, 2002, police reported that Samudra had confessed to the Bali bombings a day after his arrest and had admitted involvement in the Christmas Eve 2000 church bombings. Police said two terrorist cells totaling a dozen people were involved. One group of militants, including Amrozi, from Lamongan in eastern Java set off the remote-detonation bombing of the Sari Club. Another group from Serang in western Java set off the smaller Paddy’s bar bomb, which involved a suicide bomber named Iqbal, who had an explosives-laden backpack. Samudra was following the directives of Mukhlas, an Islamic teacher and JI strategist and older brother of Amrozi.
Mukhlas was arrested on December 3, 2002, and confessed to helping plan the Bali bombings.
On January 14, 2003, two more suspects, including field coordinator Ali Imron, were arrested on Berukan Island in eastern Kalimantan Province.
On January 28, 2003, Indonesian National Police chief Dai Bachtiar said that detained cleric Abubakar Baasyir had given a blessing to the “jihad operation” in Bali. Baasyir approved the plan that was developed by senior militants at a meeting in Bangkok in February 2002 to strike U.S. and other Western targets in Indonesia and Singapore. Bachtiar also said Hambali provided $35,000 to finance the attacks, giving the money to Malaysian operative Wan Min Wan Mat, who forwarded the funds to Mukhlas. Other Indonesian security officials believed the money came from Seyam Reda, a German held on immigration charges.
On February 3, 2003, Indonesian police announced the arrest of JI members Mas Selamat Kastari, a Singaporean wanted in Singapore for participating in a hijacking plot, and Malaysian citizen Noor Din, who was suspected of helping plan the Bali bombings. Kastari had fled Singapore in December 2001 and planned to hijack a U.S., U.K., or Singaporean jet flying out of Bangkok and crash it into Singapore’s Changi Airport. Din was grabbed in Gresik on Java Island, where police seized an M-16 rifle and ammunition that belonged to Ali Imron.
On February 21, 2003, the trial began of Silvester Tendean, the store owner accused of selling the chemicals used in the bombing.
On March 11, 2003, the government announced that the August 1, 2000, car bombing of Philippine ambassador Leonides Caday’s home in Jakarta was carried out by the same JI terrorists accused in the Bali blasts. The government said the attack was ordered in July 2000 by Hambali during a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two of the terrorists were Amrozi, who purchased the Sari Club van, and Hutomo Pamungkas (alias Mubarok), who distributed the money that financed the attacks and helped assemble the Jakarta bomb. Amrozi purchased the explosives for the two attacks at a shop in Surabaya, East Java. Ali Imron was also indirectly involved in the Jakarta bombing, according to police. Philippine investigators said JI was trained by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) of the Philippines in the attack.
On April 14, 2003, Indonesian prosecutors filed treason charges against Abubakar Baasyir.
On April 23, 2003, the national police announced the arrests of 18 JI members, including Mohamad bin Abas (alias Nasir Abbas), Malaysian leader of the Mantiqi 3 cell that operates in the southern Philippines and northern Indonesia. Three of them were linked to the Bali bombings. The Mantiqi 3 includes the Philippines, Brunei, eastern Malaysia, and Kalimantan and Sulawesi in Indonesia. It was based in Camp Abubakar, run by the MILF, before the Philippine military overran it in 2000. Police also arrested Abu Rusdan, who had been JI’s temporary leader.
Baasyir’s trial began on April 23, 2003. He was charged in a 25-page indictment with involvement in church bombings on Christmas Eve 2000 that killed 19 people, a failed plot to bomb U.S. interests in Singapore, and a plot to assassinate President Megawati Sukarnoputri in 2001 when she was vice president. The government said Baasyir is JI’s leader. The charges carry a life sentence. He was not charged with the Bali bombings. On May 28, 2003, Ali Imron and Mubarok, both suspected of involvement in the Bali bombings, testified that they believed Baasyir was JI’s leader.
On April 30, 2003, prosecutors charged Amrozi with buying the explosives and driving the van that exploded. The charges carry the death penalty.
On June 26, 2003, Faiz bin Abu Bakar Bafana, 41, a Malaysian and treasurer of JI, told the court via teleconference from a Singapore jail that bin Laden had set in motion a series of plots that JI pursued in Singapore and Indonesia in 2000. Bafana said Baasyir approved of the planned attacks and appointed Mukhlas as an operations chief of JI; Mukhlas was charged with organizing the Bali bombings.
On June 30, 2003, police arrested Idris, one of the organizers of the Bali bombing, who had also helped in a bank robbery on Sumatra to fund terrorist operations.
On August 7, 2003, Amrozi was found guilty and sentenced to death.
On September 2, 2003, Chief Judge Muhammad Saleh announced that an Indonesian court had convicted Baasyir of treason for involvement in the JI and attempting to overthrow the government, sentencing him to four years in prison. On December 1, 2003, an Indonesian appeals court overturned the treason charges and reduced Baasyir’s sentence from four to three years. He was cleared of charges of leading the JI. The court upheld his conviction of immigration violations. On March 9, 2004, the Indonesian Supreme Court further reduced Baasyir’s sentence, permitting him to go free by April 4, 2004. On March 3, 2005, Baasyir was sentenced to two and a half years for conspiracy for the Bali bombings. He was freed in June 2006.
Meanwhile, also on September 8, 2003, a Bali court sentenced three militants to 15–16 years for a robbery that funded the bombing.
On September 10, 2003, a court in Bali sentenced Imam Samudra to death by firing squad for his masterminding of the bombing. Prosecutors said he chose the recruits and financed the attack. Samudra said the bombing was revenge for U.S. tyranny.
On September 18, 2003, a court sentenced to life in prison Ali Imron, finding that he had participated in making the bomb and driving the minivan to the area.
In 2003, one of the 17 Indonesians who took terrorist training in the Philippines in April 2000 was arrested for hiding a Bali bomber.
On November 8, 2008, the Indonesian government executed Imam Samudra, Amrozi, and Mukhlas.
On March 9, 2010, police raided an Internet cafe and killed Dulmatin (alias Joko Pitoyo), a senior member of JI who they believed was behind the Bali bombings. His group claimed to be the Aceh branch of al Qaeda for Southeast Asia.
On January 25, 2011, Pakistani security officials arrested al Qaeda operative Umar Patek in connection with the Bali bombings. His trial began in February 2012. He was convicted on six terrorism charges and sentenced on June 21, 2012, to 20 years in prison for murder and bomb-making.
On June 9, 2011, Indonesian authorities in central Java arrested Heru Kuncoro, who was suspected of buying electronic equipment used in the bombings. He was among 16 people arrested in early June 2011 on suspicion of plotting cyanide attacks against police, according to Fox News. He was charged in late October 2011. His case remains open.
Overview: Chechen terrorists became more brazen during the late 1990s and early 2000s, refusing to buckle in the wake of massive crackdowns against them by the Moscow regime. Attacking planes, subways, apartment complexes, and government officials, the Chechen rebels posed the greatest terrorist threat to the Russian regime since the breakup of the Soviet Union. An especially daring attack took place in the heart of Moscow in October 2002, when Chechens resurrected an attack type rarely seen in the 2000s—a large-scale barricade-and-hostage operation with a laundry list of demands posed to the authorities. Exceptionally long and fanciful names designed to sow confusion and fear were trotted out by various self-appointed terrorist spokesmen. A bungled Russian rescue attempt left 170 people dead, sparking a firestorm of internal and international protests regarding the government’s handling of the incident and of the rebellion in general. Russian attempts to equate the Chechens to al Qaeda’s depredations, despite evidence of links between the two groups, fell on deaf ears.
Incident: On October 23, 2002, at 9:00 P.M., scores of masked Chechen gunmen and women armed with automatic weapons took over a Moscow theater on the corner of Dobrovskaya and Melnikova, holding nearly 900 people hostage. About 100 people escaped in the initial attack; another 46 were freed in stages. The House of Culture for the State Ball-Bearing Factory theater was showing a popular musical, NordOst (Northeast). The terrorists demanded that Russian troops leave Chechnya within a week and end the war in the separatist region. They threatened to kill all the hostages if their demands were not met. At least one and perhaps two hostages were killed and two wounded in the initial assault by the gunmen, who had grenades strapped to their bodies. The Chechens said they were holding 650 people after having released 150. They claimed to have placed land mines around the theater’s perimeter.
Tatyana Solnishkina, an orchestra member, used her cell phone to say that the rebels were threatening to kill 10 hostages if one of them was harmed. The news media quoted her as saying that the terrorists had explosives.
Alevtina Popva, an actress, escaped from backstage, and told the news media that the terrorists were chanting like kamikazes. She and some colleagues used curtains and scarves to climb out windows. Terrorists later fired rocket-propelled grenades at two teen girls who were attempting to run to safety, injuring a Russian soldier.
Rebel Abu Said claimed that the rebels were all shahids (Arabic for martyr). An Interfax reporter called from his cell phone to say that the rebels claimed membership in the Suicide Commandos of the 29th Division.
The rebels separated the men and women, and later separated out the foreign citizens into a third group. Some Muslim audience members were permitted to leave.
Several children were freed by the rebels. One boy said that his mother and sister were still being held, as were dozens of other children.
The hostages included citizens of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, France, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Israel, and the Netherlands. At least 3 Americans, a Russian with a U.S. green card, and 70 other foreigners were being held.
President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin said that the attack was planned by foreign forces and was connected with the attacks in Bali and the Philippines. A police source said that the rebels were contacting accomplices in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
Aslan Maskhadov, former president of Chechnya, denied involvement with the hostage-takers, blaming a splinter faction with links to Muslim terrorists. Al Jazeera played a tape that showed the hostage-takers in front of an Arabic-language banner. A Chechen website said the attackers were led by Movsar Barayev, 25, nephew of Arbi Barayev, a Chechen rebel leader who died in 2001. The younger Barayev said he headed a group of Islamic radicals he called the Islamic Special Purpose Regiment of the Chechen State Defense Committee (Majlis al-Shura) with 400 active fighters and as many in reserve. His second-in-command was Abu Bakr. Al Jazeera later said the group was the Sabotage and Military Surveillance Group of the Riyadh al-Salikhin Martyrs (aka the Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of the Chechen Martyrs). A group member said in a recorded statement, “Our demands are stopping the war and withdrawal of Russian forces. We are implementing the operation by order of the military commander of the Chechen Republic.”
The State Department said that the attack was by three groups:
Singer and politician Yosif Kobzon, the Duma member from Chechnya, claimed he had established communications with the hostage-takers, and was going to negotiate with the gunmen. Kobzon, accompanied by a Red Cross representative, was permitted into the theater and obtained the release of five hostages after 1:30 P.M. on October 24, 2002. They included a sick Briton in his fifties or sixties, a woman, and three children. During Kobzon’s second visit, he was accompanied by parliamentarian Irina Khakamada. The terrorists refused to free anyone else, saying that they did not want to deal with intermediaries, only with decisionmakers. Parliamentarian Grigory Yavlinsky was permitted inside the theater later that day, as was another group of negotiators. Other negotiators included Sergei Govorukhin, a film director; U.S. ambassador Alexander Vershbow; Duma member for Chechnya Aslanbek Aslakhanov; journalist Anna Politkovskaya; and former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov. Another two hostages fled at 6:30 P.M.
During one visit, Kobzon was accompanied by Mark Franchetti of the Sunday Times of London, who interviewed the rebel leader.
On October 26, 2002, the Chechens freed seven more hostages at 6:00 A.M. At noon, eight children were freed.
A male hostage threw a bottle at a Chechen woman and charged her. She shot him dead, along with a nearby woman.
On October 25, 2002, the Chechens called for antiwar demonstrations in Red Square. That day, the rebels released 19 hostages, including some children.
The terrorists refused to improve the conditions of the hostages, who were starving and who had to use the orchestra pit as a toilet.
On October 26, 2002, in the early morning, the terrorists reportedly killed two male hostages and wounded a man and a woman. The hostages had attempted to escape, but only two made it. The sound of gunfire and explosions was heard at 3:30 A.M., when Russian Special Forces raided the theater in a battle that led to the deaths of 42 rebels, including rebel leader Movsar Barayev and 18 female suicide bombers with explosives strapped to their stomachs, and 117 hostages who were killed by the incapacitating gas used by the rescue force. Some of the women were shot. A man with head wounds and a woman with stomach injuries were taken away by ambulance. Several rebels were captured. Most of the freed hostages were hospitalized due to the effects of the gas that was pumped into the ventilation system. Russian soldiers refused to identify the gas, even to the attending physicians. At least 600 hostages were treated for bullet wounds and gas inhalation. The gas came in so quickly that the terrorists did not have time to put on their gas masks. Pentagon sources suggested that the gas was opium-based. Other U.S. doctors suggested it was fentanyl, an opiate derivative. Still others said it was an aerosol form of carfentanil, a potent narcotic used to sedate big game animals, or halothane, an inhalational anesthetic used in surgery for 50 years.
Among the dead hostages were 115 Russians, an American, an Azerbaijani, a Dutch citizen, 2 Ukrainians, an Armenian, an Austrian, a Kazakh, and a Belarussian.
On October 28, 2002, the Russians arrested a pair of Chechens in connection with the attack.
On October 29, 2002, Denmark arrested Akhmed Zakayev, an aide to Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, for possible involvement in the attack. He was held until November 12, 2002, pending investigation. He had been attending the final session of the World Chechen Congress in Copenhagen. Russian officials detained dozens of possible accomplices.
On January 25, 2003, the theater officially reopened after $2.5 million in renovations, including a new security system with metal detectors, a new audio system, and new orchestra pit. Elsewhere, Russian police detained three Chechens in Penza, 310 miles southeast of Moscow, on suspicion of involvement in the attack.
Nord-Ost reopened on February 8, 2003.
In June 2003, Zaurbek Talkhigov was sentenced to eight and one half years for tipping off terrorists about police attempts to rescue the hostages.
By July 17, 2003, 793 former hostages and families of the 129 dead hostages were having a difficult time seeking redress in Russian courts. The 135 former hostages or family members who had agreed to sue were represented by Attorney Igor Trunov. As of that date, Russian courts had rejected 35 of the 65 lawsuits filed against the state. On July 28, 2003, a Moscow court rejected appeals in 21 compensation cases; attorneys argued that the law applies only to material damages for loss of income.
Overview: Because fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, many observers suggested that the Saudis were supportive of al Qaeda, at least passively, and that not enough had been done to combat the group. Views of the Saudi regime’s stance on terrorism changed dramatically when a wing of al Qaeda began attacking Saudi interests at home. A significant slap at the House of Saud occurred when al Qaeda conducted a major suicide bombing against a residential complex. The Saudi government engaged in a two-pronged attack on domestic terrorists, establishing an extensive Most Wanted Terrorist List, while also creating a terrorist rehabilitation program. Western leaders praised Saudi efforts.
Incident: On May 12, 2003, at 11:25 a.m., suicide bombers set of f three truck bombs in a residential complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 34 people, including 8 Americans, 2 Britons, 7 Saudis, 2 Jordanians, 2 Filipinos, 1 Lebanese, 1 Swiss, and 9 terrorists. Another 190 people were injured. The facilities were identified as the Cordoval, Gedawal, and Hamra residences. The terrorists first fired at the sentries before pushing a button that opened the gates and permitted them to drive deep into the compounds. A member of the Saudi National Guard was killed in a gun battle. Two Filipino employees of Vinnell Corporation were also killed, and several employees were injured, two critically. Jordanian children Zeina Abassi, 10, and her brother Yazan, 5, were killed. A ninth American died on June 1, 2003. The 2-week-old niece of Jim Young, 41, an entrepreneur from Dalton, Georgia, was badly injured in the face. Also injured was British citizen Erika Warrington, 15.
In an initial attack, the terrorists fired at guards, detonated the bomb, and then escaped. The compound houses several Britons; a British school is on the grounds. The terrorists worked their way through three levels of security, including Saudi National Guards. The Dodge Ram truck contained 400 pounds of plastic explosives and damaged every building in the compound. The terrorists also drove a white Ford Crown Victoria, which they left outside; it was impaled on the gate in the explosion. Two attackers died; three escaped on foot.
At Al Hamra, two cars, including a car bomb, drove up to the main entrance at 11:30 P.M. The terrorists shot the security guards. As one car drove toward the recreation area, the terrorists continued firing, wounding or killing several people on the street. The car bomb went off outside a pool area where a barbecue party was under way. The car landed in the pool. At least 10 people died and dozens were wounded. Saudi officials worried that some of the attackers were still on the grounds hours later. The press reported that gunfire could be heard in the early morning in Riyadh. Injured were Saudis Berkel, husband Jelal, and their 3-year-old son; two little girls from Jordan—their father was in a coma—and a Lebanese man. Al Hamra and Gedawal are home to workers from Turkey, Lebanon, the United States, and United Kingdom. Two attackers died; three escaped on foot. Mohammed Atef al Kayyaly was killed.
Gedawal facility housed Americans working for a local subsidiary of the Fairfax, Virginia-based Vinnell Corporation, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Corporation. The firm is jointly owned by U.S. and Saudi interests, and trains the Saudi National Guard. U.S. ambassador Robert W. Jordan had asked the Saudi interior ministry for more security on April 29 and May 7, 2003, and on May 10, 2003, specifically requested more security for Gedawal. (The house raided on May 6, 2003, is just across the street from Gedewal.) The compound’s elaborate security system minimized the effect of the bombing of the 408 six-bedroom, two-story villas in the complex. At 11:25 P.M., a guard posted at one of the four towers at the corners of the facility went to a small room below to have tea with other guards. Shortly thereafter, a GMC pickup and a Ford sedan drove up to that gate. The terrorists shot to death two guards and wounded two other guards and another employee. They raised a gate by hand. Guards at a nearby interior gate heard shooting and keyed in a security code that prevented the metal gate from opening. The car and truck stopped outside the second gate. The three men in the Ford left the car, while the duo in the truck set off the truck bomb, killing them and the other three terrorists, who had grenades strapped to their waists. No residents died. The blast destroyed the gates, sewage tanks, and the terrorists’ vehicles.
At least some of the attackers wore Saudi Arabian National Guard uniforms and drove vehicles commonly used by residents and guards. When the sentries requested ID, the terrorists opened fire.
Ali al-Khudair and two other new-generation radicals called on Saudis not to cooperate in the investigation. They were rebuffed and forced to retract their statements.
President Bush vowed “American justice” would be given the terrorists.
The Saudis said the 50- to 60-member al Qaeda cell that attacked on May 6, 2003, was responsible. It was led by Khaled Jehani, 29, who had left the country at age 18, and fought in Bosnia and Chechnya. He served in Afghan camps.
The bombings came hours before U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell was due to arrive in Riyadh.
Only three dead terrorists were positively identified via DNA. Possibly among the dead was Abdul Kareem Yazijy, 35, who was suspected of membership in the terrorist cell. His younger brother, Abdullah, called on him to turn himself in and noted that he had disappeared 18 months earlier. He had a long history of “emotional instability,” according to Abdullah. His brother went to Afghanistan for a few months in 1990 and later worked for two years in Sarajevo for the Saudi charity Supreme Committee for the Collection of Donations for Bosnia–Herzegovnia, which was raided in 2002 for al Qaeda ties.
Saudi officials said three al Qaeda cells with 50 active members were operating in the country before the bombings. The cells were set up by Abd-al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the former head of operations for al Qaeda in the Persian Gulf. He was captured in November 2002 and is in U.S. custody. He was involved in the USS Cole attack in October 2000 and planned other attacks on U.S. and Western ships. He was succeeded by Khaled Jehani, 29, a Saudi Afghan war veteran, who was in charge of planning the attack. The bombing team leader was Turki Mishal Dandani, another Saudi Afghan veteran who remained at large.
Saudi officials suggested that all of the dead terrorists came from the list of 19 who were sought in the May 6, 2003 case.
On May 14, 2003, the Saudis said they were holding a suspect who turned himself in to authorities the day of the bombings.
On May 18, 2003, Saudi interior minister Prince Nayef said that four al Qaeda suspects detained in the last three days knew in advance of the attacks.
On May 24, 2003, the Bush administration suspended contacts with Iran over reports that an al Qaeda cell in Iran was involved in the bombings. Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian serving as the group’s military commander, was believed to have given the order to attack. He was believed hiding in Iran along with Abu Mohammed Masri, the group’s training chief; Saad bin Laden, Osama’s son; and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had been in Baghdad. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told IRNA that Tehran had arrested several al Qaeda members, “but we don’t know who these people are to be able to say whether they are senior or not. They need to be identified and interrogated.” Iran claimed it had deported 500 al Qaeda members in the past year. Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud said the kingdom will seek to extradite anyone who had a role in the bombings.
A second command group was believed to be on the Pakistan–Afghan border.
Saudi oil and security analyst Nawaf Obaid wrote in the May 18, 2003, Washington Post that a captured senior member of the cell said they rushed the attack because the May 6, 2003, group feared it was about to be picked up by the authorities. He noted that two leaders of the cell and most of the explosives had come through Yemen.
On May 20, 2003, Saudi officials said that some al Qaeda members fled the country to the United States before the attacks.
Saudi officials arrested Ali Abdulrahman Gamdi, 29, a key figure in the bombings in Riyadh, on May 27, 2003. The Saudi had attended al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and was in contact with bin Laden at Tora Bora. He was picked up with two other Saudis after they left an Internet cafe; authorities said the trio were planning an attack on a major hotel and commercial center in Riyadh. Authorities confiscated the computers they were using. Ali Aburahman Gamdi was the first of the 19 people Saudi officials said were involved in the bombing. As of that date, Saudi officials had arrested 44 people, including 4 women picked up in Mecca.
Saudi authorities announced on May 28, 2003, that they had captured nine al Qaeda suspects in Medina during the previous 24 hours, along with Ali Khudair and Ahmed Khalidi, two clerics who had called on their followers not to cooperate with the investigation. The London-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia said that the two clerics were shot dead in Medina. A third cleric, Nasser Fahd, remained at large. Those detained included two Moroccans and a Moroccan woman stopped at a checkpoint. Saudi Special Forces also surrounded two groups of seven extremists in Medina. Police found explosives and bomb-making equipment at one of the Medina buildings.
In a gun battle on May 31, 2003, Saudi authorities killed Youssef Saleh Eiery, a Saudi national who belonged to the 19-member gang and arrested another after the duo threw hand grenades at a police patrol, killing two policemen.
The United States asked the Saudis to arrest Ahmed Abu-Ali in the case. His family’s residence in Falls Church, Virginia, was searched by the FBI. He was represented by attorney Ashraf Nubani, who also represented some of the defendants in the June 25, 2003, arrests in northern Virginia against Lashkar-e-Taiba.
On July 3, 2003, following a five-hour standoff, Saudi police killed Turki Mishal Dandani and three associates when the terrorists ran out of ammunition in a shootout in a house in Suweir in the north.
On September 23, 2003, Saudi forces killed three terrorists, including Zubayr Rimi, a suspected al Qaeda militant believed involved in the attack, who was named in an FBI terror alert on September 5, 2003. The gun battle occurred at a housing complex in Jizan, near the Yemen border. One security officer died. Two suspects were arrested.
On January 8, 2004, 100 Swiss police officers raided homes throughout the country and arrested eight foreigners suspected of being al Qaeda supporters who aided the attacks. They questioned 20 other people in five states. The detainees were held on suspicion of providing logistical support to a criminal organization, but were not formally charged.
By April 2004, Saudi security forces had arrested more than 600 individuals on counterterrorism charges.
As of late 2013, the case remained open, with Abd-al-Rahim al-Nashiri in Guantanamo Bay military prison awaiting trial.
Overview: The Philippines was the scene of various terrorist insurgencies for decades. The Moro National Liberation Front, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Abu Sayyaf, the Sparrow assassination teams of Communist Party of the Philippines radicals, and numerous other groups have operated, often with impunity, on the islands. Ramzi Yusuf’s hopes to attack the Pope, fly planes into buildings, and other plots took shape in Manila. Bombings, targeted assassinations, kidnappings, and murders— including beheadings—became common in the 2000s. The Abu Sayyaf group’s al Qaeda ties led to stepped-up bilateral efforts by the United States to improve Filipino security response capabilities. Abu Sayyaf’s bloodiest incident to date was its bombing of the Superferry, putting the death toll in the triple digits.
Incident: On February 27, 2004, an explosion sank the Superferry 14, killing 118 people an hour after it left Manila, Philippines. In March 2004, Abu Sayyaf member Redendo Cain Dellosa confessed to hiding TNT in a TV set he carried onto the ferry before escaping. He later claimed he was tortured into signing the confession.
On October 11, 2004, authorities charged six men, two of whom were arrested shortly after the explosion, with setting off the bomb. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said the six were also responsible for the 2001 kidnappings of 17 Filipinos and 3 Americans in Dos Palmas; one of the Americans was beheaded and another killed during a rescue attempt. Arroyo said the government was hunting for the attack organizers— Khadaffy Janjalani and Abu Sulaiman—and two accomplices. Police said Janjalani had demanded $1 million from the ferry company as protection money, which it said was “unhampered use” of the waters in the southern Philippines. Janjalani died in a September 2006 gun battle with Philippine security forces.
Overview: Although Spain had a long history of attacks by Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA, Basque Nation and Liberty separatists, terrorists from the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups (GRAPO)—the armed wing of the illegal Communist Party of Spain—and various right-wing groups, its most wrenching attack came at the hands of al Qaeda–inspired Islamic radicals who killed more than 200 and injured another 2,000 in a morning attack on commuter trains in Madrid. Ten million people marched in Madrid, Zaragoza, Valencia, Bilbao, and elsewhere in protest of the terrorist attacks. Public reaction to the attacks led to the March 14, 2003, electoral victory of the opposition Socialist Workers Party. Many voters said they had voted for the opposition because of the discovery that al Qaeda was responsible for the bombings and that most of the electorate was against Spanish involvement in Iraq. This appears to have been the first time a terrorist group had directly influenced the outcome of an election. Prime Minister–elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero promised to withdraw Spain’s 1,300 troops from Iraq but make terrorism the government’s chief priority.
Incidents: On March 11, 2004, between 7:35 and 7:55 a.m., 10 bombs hidden in backpacks exploded on four packed commuter trains in three Madrid train stations during rush hour, killing over 200 people and injuring another 2,000. Victims included at least 47 people from 10 other countries, including Ecuador, Peru, the Philippines, and Romania.
Three bombs went off at 7:39 A.M. on a train entering Atocha station. Another four blasts hit a train arriving from Alcala de Henares at Atocha at 7:44 A.M. A bomb went off on a train entering Santa Eugenia station at 7:49 A.M. Two bombs went off on the platform of the El Pozo station at 7:54 A.M., killing 70 people on a double-decked train. Police detonated several unexploded devices. Police said there were 13 bombs, all containing 28–33 pounds of explosives. Police also destroyed a suspicious car near one of the stations.
The government initially blamed the Basque Nation and Liberty (ETA), but later changed its focus to al Qaeda affiliates.
A van discovered outside Madrid in Alcala de Henares later in the day contained seven detonator caps and a cassette with Koran verses.
A sports bag found in one of the trains at El Pozo station contained a timed detonator, a mobile phone, wires, and explosives that were commonly available. The explosives had not gone off because the terrorists had mistakenly set the timer to 7:40 P.M., instead of 7:40 A.M.
The al Qaeda–affiliated Abu Hafs al-Masri group claimed credit in an e-mail to the al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, saying that Spain was a U.S. ally. Spain had been part of the coalition in Iraq. The group said, “Operation Death Trains . . . a way to settle old accounts with Spain, crusader and ally of America in its war against Islam.” The group warned that “the expected ‘Winds of Black Death’ strike against America is now in its final stage.” However, the group had also claimed credit for the East Coast blackout of 2003. Osama bin Laden had warned in an October 2003 tape that al Qaeda would attack Spain. The group later sent a videotape, which some officials suggested was filmed in Brussels or Amsterdam. Police were also investigating the movement of a large amount of money to Morocco to finance Islamic extremist operations. In a message following the election, the group said it would suspend operations to permit Spain time to fulfill the new government’s promise to pull troops out of Iraq.
In a video found in a trash can in a parking lot on March 13, 2004, Abu Dujan al-Afgani, who claimed to be head of al Qaeda’s European military wing, said the bombings were to protest Spanish “collaboration with the criminal Bush and his allies. . . . If you do not stop your collaboration, more and more blood will flow.” Police later believed him to be Rachid Oulad Akcha, a Moroccan immigrant.
On March 13, 2004, the government announced the arrest of three Moroccans and two Indians, possibly with links to Muslim extremists. Two Spaniards of Indian descent were also being questioned. Several buildings and houses were searched. The group had been linked to the cell phone and cell phone card found in the gym bag. The Moroccans were identified as Jamal Zougam, who had been listed as an al Qaeda operative in a 9/11 indictment; Mohamed Bekkali; and Mohamed Chaoui. They had criminal records in Spain. Zougam apparently had been under surveillance since the May 2003 bombings in Casablanca, Morocco. The investigating judge also questioned Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas (alias Abu Dahdah), who had been in prison since November 2001 on suspicion of leading the al Qaeda cell in Spain. Zougam was an associate of Yarkas. The suspects purchased 100 prepaid calling cards for mobile phones 15 days before the attack. Zougam owned a cell phone shop in Madrid.
The government also announced that it had received a videotape from the self-described al Qaeda military spokesman in Europe, who said “We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid exactly two and a half years after the attacks on New York and Washington.”
On March 31, 2004, the investigating judge issued international arrest warrants for five Moroccans and a Tunisian. A wealthy Moroccan, Abdelkarim Mejjati, was thought to be the organizer of the attacks. He was also wanted for the bombings in 2003 in Casablanca and Riyadh. Police were now investigating the involvement of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group in the attacks. The Tunisian was identified as Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, the leader and coordinator of the plot. All were wanted for murder and belonging to a terrorist group. The warrant said Fahket had rented a house 25 miles southeast of Madrid, where the explosives were prepared.
Police cornered seven terrorist suspects in the Madrid suburb of Leganes on April 3, 2004, at 7:00 p .m. The terrorists yelled, “Allah is great” and “We will die fighting.” After a two-hour gun battle, the terrorists committed suicide by setting off bombs in their apartment. A Special Forces policeman died and 15 were injured in the nighttime bombing. Police said that four suspects might have escaped. Among those killed were Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet (alias The Tunisian); Abdennabi Kounjaa, a Moroccan; Asri Rifaat Anouar; and Jamal Ahmidan, a Moroccan (alias The Chinese), the suspected operational commander. Police said on April 7, 2004, that the dead terrorists had planned another major attack in Madrid, possibly during Easter, and possibly against Jewish sites. Police found 200 copper detonators, 22 pounds of Goma 2 Eco explosives, money, and other evidence of plans in the apartment debris.
By April 11, 2004, investigators believed that the cell leader, Fakhet, sought out al Qaeda for assistance but that the group did not directly participate. He traveled to Turkey in late 2002 or early 2003 to meet with senior al Qaeda European operative Amer Azizi, to whom he outlined plans for the attack. He asked for manpower and other support to carry it out. Azizi had fought in Bosnia and Afghanistan. He said al Qaeda could not offer direct aid, but it supported the plan and Fakhet could use al Qaeda’s name in claiming credit. Azizi also suggested contacting Jamal Zougam, a follower of Yarkas, imprisoned since November 2001 on suspicion of being al Qaeda’s Spanish cell leader.
Interior Minister Angel Acebes told reporters that the 3/11 financing came from drug deals. Police cited testimony by Khayata Kattan, a Syrian member of al Qaeda who was extradited from Jordan earlier in 2004 on a warrant issued for the 9/11 attacks.
On April 28, 2004, Azizi was indicted on charges of helping to plan the 9/11 attacks by organizing a meeting in northeastern Spain in July 2001 in which key plotters Mohamed Atta and Ramzi Binalshibh finalized details, according to Judge Baltasar Garzon. He had also been charged in a September 2003 indictment against bin Laden and 34 other terrorist suspects. Azizi was charged with belonging to a terrorist organization. He was charged with multiple counts of murder “as many deaths and injuries as were committed” on 9/11. He allegedly provided lodging for the Tarragona meeting and acting as a terrorist courier. He was a close friend of Yarkas. Azizi fled Spain in November 2001.
On June 8, 2004, police in Belgium and Italy arrested 17 individuals with suspected links to al Qaeda, including Rabei Osman el Sayed Ahmed (aka Mohamed the Egyptian and Mohamed Abdul Hadi Fayad), believed involved in the bombing. The press reported that Ahmed was a former army explosives expert who conducted training courses at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. He was in Spain in 2003 and in touch with the ringleader, Fakhet. Ahmed recruited Fakhet at a Madrid mosque and may have supplied the explosives expertise. He was traced to Italy via intercepted phone calls. Spain requested extradition so he could face 190 counts of murder, 1,430 counts of attempted murder, and 4 counts of terrorism. A Palestinian and a Jordanian arrested in Belgium were known lieutenants of Ahmed and were believed involved in the 3/11 attacks. Police believed Ahmed and Fakhet were in a house in Morata de Tajuna where the bombs were made. On December 1, 2004, Italy’s top appeals court informed Spain’s High Court that it had approved the extradition of Ahmed, who was being held in the Voghera prison near Milan.
Spanish authorities believed that the overall organizer was Syrian-born former journalist Abu Musab Suri (alias Mustafa Setmarian Nasar), who was once the overall commander of al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and who once headed the group’s propaganda operations.
On November 16, 2004, a court sentenced a 16-year-old Spaniard to six years in a juvenile detention facility after he pleaded guilty to helping steal and transport the dynamite used in the bombings.
In 2005, Azizi, who had recruited the leaders of the bombers’ cell, died in a missile strike on Haisori village near Miranshah in North Waziristan, Pakistan.
In June 2005, forensic experts suggested that Mohamed Afalah, a Moroccan wanted in the Madrid bombings, conducted a suicide attack in Iraq in May 2005.
On April 11, 2006, Judge Juan del Olmo charged six people with 191 counts of terrorist murder and 1,755 attempted murders. Another 23 people were indicted for collaborating in the plot. The trial began on February 15, 2007. On October 31, 2007, a Spanish court convicted 21 of involvement but cleared 3 of being masterminds. Two Moroccans and a Spaniard who provided the explosives were sentenced to 42,924 years in prison. Jamal Zougam was convicted of membership in a jihadist terrorist cell and of terrorist murder. Moroccan citizen Othman el-Gnaoui was convicted of membership in a jihadist terrorist cell, terrorist murder, and helping to get explosives to the house where the bombs were made. Spanish citizen Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras was found guilty of providing the explosives. Ahmed was cleared of all charges. His acquittal was upheld by the Supreme Court on July 17, 2008.
On November 6, 2006, a Milan court found Ahmed guilty of conspiracy to participate in international terrorist activities and sentenced him to 10 years. He was extradited to Madrid on November 17, 2006. He would remain in prison on these charges following his acquittal in the 3/11 case.
In November 2009, Judge Eloy Velasco indicted seven Islamic militants— including four Moroccans, an Algerian, and a Tunisian—for providing money, housing, food, and forged documents to the bombers.
Overview: Chechen terrorists continued to conduct mass-casualty attacks, stepping up their operations by introducing women—heretofore less likely to attract the attention of security screeners—to attack squads.
Incident: On August 24, 2004, two Russian passenger jets that left the same Moscow airport within 30 minutes of each other disappeared on radar screens around 11:00 P.M. They crashed within three minutes of each other, killing all 90 on board.
The Islambouli Brigades claimed credit, saying it was avenging Russian abuses in Chechnya. The group said on a website that five attackers were on each plane, adding:
Russia continues to slaughter the Muslims and will not stop unless a war starts where there will be bloodshed. Our mujahideen, thanks to God, were able to make the first strike, which will be followed by a series of other operations in a wave of support to our brothers, the Muslims of Chechnya and other Muslim areas that suffer the blasphemy of Russia.
The crashes occurred four days before an election to choose a Chechen president. Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov’s London representative, Akhmed Zakayev, denied involvement.
At 9:30 P.M., Sebir flight 1047, a TU-154 carrying 38 passengers and 8 crew, left Moscow for Sochi. It disappeared from radar at 11:00 P.M. The pilot activated a distress and hijack signal. Four hours later, investigators found the debris 82 miles north of Rostov-on-Don.
At 10:00 P.M., Volga-Avia Express flight 1303, a Tupolev TU-134, took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport heading for Volgograd (former Stalingrad) with 36 passengers and 8 crew, including the chief of the airline. It disappeared from radar at 10:56 P.M. Witnesses in Tula said they saw an explosion before the plane hit the ground near Buchalki village.
On August 27, 2004, authorities announced that investigators had discovered traces of hexogen explosives (also known as RDX or clyclonite) in the wreckage of the TU-154 that crashed near Rostov-on-Don. The next day, investigators reported finding RDX traces on the TU134 that crashed in the Tula region south of Moscow. Police believed two Chechen women bought tickets at the last minute to board the two planes at Moscow’s airport. They were the only people whose family members did not inquire about the bodies.
Investigators reported on August 31, 2004, that two Chechen women had accompanied the suspected bombers to Moscow in the days before the crashes. The duo remained at large in Moscow.
On September 17, 2004, Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, 39, took credit on Kavkaz-Center, an Islamic website based in Lithuania.
Investigators said that a Chechen woman bribed an airline ticket agent with 1,000 rubles ($34) to put her on a different flight; the agent scrawled, “Admit on board flight 1047.” The two women paid 5,000 rubles to a black market dealer for tickets for the flights. They had initially been stopped by police but were inexplicably let go. They were identified as Satsita Dzhebirkhanova and Aminat Nagayeva, although some Russian newspapers said that the passports were faked.
On September 24, 2004, police Captain Mikhail Artamonov was charged with negligence that led to fatalities. Airline employee Nikolai Korenkov and accused ticket scalper Armen Arutyunian were charged with complicity in terrorism. On April 12, 2005, a Moscow regional court charged the latter two with aiding and abetting terrorism and commercial bribery. On June 30, 2005, Artamonov was sentenced to seven years for negligence.
Overview: Chechen terrorists’ preference for large-group attacks and the holding of large groups of hostages was seen two years earlier with the takeover of a Moscow theater. The organization, with other ethnic groups joining them, increased the pressure on the government and the public by taking over an elementary school on the first day of classes.
Incident: On September 1, 2004, at 9:00 A.M., 32 terrorists, including Chechens, Kazakhs, Russians, Ingush, Ossetians, and at least 10 Arabs, drove up in a military-style GAZ-66 truck and shot their way into School No. 1 in Beslan in North Ossetia, Russia, near Chechnya, during the morning and took 1,200 people, including hundreds of students and parents, hostage on the first day of school. At least 11 adults died in the initial shootout with the terrorists, who were wearing camouflage. At least two female terrorists wore explosive belts. The terrorists set up a pedal mechanism to an explosive and threatened to blow up the school if rescuers attacked them and said they would kill 50 hostages for every kidnapper killed, 20 for each wounded.
The school had been defended by only three security guards; one was killed and the two others were injured in the initial shootout.
By mid-afternoon, 15 children, who were hidden in the boiler room by their English teacher, ran to safety. The terrorists had attempted to open the heavy iron door with two grenades, with no success.
The hostage-takers demanded the release of 30 Chechen prisoners and Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. By phone, the terrorists asked to talk to the presidents of Ingushetia and North Ossetia.
The terrorists initially refused to permit medicine, food, and drink to be brought in for the hostages. By the third day, the tap water was running short, and some children drank urine. Many of the children stripped to their underwear to try to escape the suffocating heat in the school. The terrorists also rejected safe passage.
Some of the hostages later said that the terrorists were Wahhabis, wearing long beards and prayer caps.
Hundreds of Russian troops surrounded the school with armored vehicles. The perimeter broke down, however, and numerous armed townspeople joined the siege. In the afternoon of September 2, 2004, the terrorists fired rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), setting a car alight. They again fired RPGs the evening of September 3, 2004, injuring a police officer.
A local legislator said on September 2, 2004, at 9:00 P.M. that 20 male hostages had been executed inside the school. The male hostages had been herded to a different location, away from the children and women, and shot. One man had been executed an hour into the siege.
On September 3, 2004, the terrorists freed 26 young children and their mothers. Gunfire was often heard coming from inside the school. Talks were suspended. Freed hostages said the terrorists had mined the school and suspended 16–18 bombs from the ceiling of the gymnasium, where many of the hostages were herded.
The terrorists used gas masks to ensure that if would-be rescuers flooded the area with knockout gas, as had been done in the 2002 Moscow theater siege, they would not be affected.
On September 4, 2004, around 1:00 P.M., the 52-hour siege ended when troops rushed the school after hearing explosions in the gym. The troops had not planned on rushing the school, but had no choice when the terrorists opened fire on fleeing children. At least 338 hostages, including 156 children; 10 Russian Special Forces rescuers; and 30 terrorists died from gunshot wounds, fire from the explosions, shrapnel, and the collapsing roof of the gymnasium.
More than 1 percent of Beslan’s population was killed.
Itar-TASS reported that the attack was financed by Abu Omar as-Seyf, an Arab alleged to represent al Qaeda in Chechnya, and directed by Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev. An escaped hostage said she recognized some of the terrorists as having earlier done construction work on the school, leading investigators to suggest that they had hidden their weapons in the school during construction.
A Muslim group claiming loyalty to Ayman al-Zawahiri claimed credit on a website.
On September 5, 2004, the Russian government announced on state television that it had lied to the public about the scale of the hostage crisis. The broadcast made no apology that the government had claimed that only 354 hostages were inside the school. Questions remained about how many terrorists there were (reports varied from 16 to 40); how many terrorists were alive, free, or captured; how many people died; and how many had been captive. Many believed the death toll was higher than the official figure of 338. (On September 6, 2004, the government dropped the number to 334, including 156 children, and said that 1,180 hostages were involved.)
A captured terrorist identified as Nur-Pashi Kulayev was put on Russian state television on September 6, 2004. He was injured and had trouble talking, but said that “we gathered in the forest and the Colonel—it’s his nickname—and they said we must seize the school in Beslan.” He credited Basayev with giving the orders. He noted that another Chechen commander, Aslan Maskhadov, also gave orders. His group included Arabs, Uzbeks, Chechens, and people of other nationalities. “When we asked the Colonel why we must do it, he said, ‘Because we need to start war in the entire territory of the North Caucasus.’ ” Many of the school terrorists had also taken part in the June raids in Ingushetia that killed 90 people. The Washington Post reported that a Western intelligence service indicated that some of the terrorists came from Jordan and Syria.
Authorities detained relatives of Basayev and Maskhadov on the second day of the siege.
Russian authorities said that surveillance tape of the terrorists indicated that they had argued among themselves as to whether to escape or continue the siege. The group was led by four men and took phoned orders from Chechen commander Basayev. The leaders included a Chechen, a Russian, an Ingush, and an Ossetian, and were identified by their code names of Abdullah, Fantomas, The Colonel, and Magas.
All four leaders were killed in the gun battle.
The terrorists videotaped the siege; the tape was shown on Russian television on September 7, 2004, and picked up around the world. Authorities also reported that they had tapped into a walkie-talkie call from a terrorist. President Putin reported, “One asks, ‘What’s happening? I hear noise,’ and the other says, ‘It’s okay, I’m in the middle of shooting some kids. There’s nothing to do.’ They were bored, so they shot kids. What kind of freedom fighters are these?” Russian demanded the extradition from the United Kingdom of Zakayev and other Chechen separatists who had been given political asylum.
Security services reported on September 8, 2004, that the terrorist leader shot one of his own men who did not want to take children hostage, then blew up the two women by flipping the electronic control on their detonators. Police also said they had been aided by a local police officer. Authorities said the gym explosion had been an accident when the terrorists were trying to rearrange the explosives. The Kremlin also backtracked on saying that 10 Arabs were involved but continued to claim that a multinational group of extremists was involved. Moscow offered a $10 million reward for the capture or killing of Basayev and Maskhadov. The next day, Chechen rebel websites offered a $20 million bounty for President Putin’s capture.
By September 9, 2004, Russian officials had identified six Chechens and four Ingush as involved in the attack squad. Bomb techs defused 127 homemade bombs in the school.
On September 10, 2004, President Putin approved a parliamentary investigation into the attack. He also complained about American and British calls for negotiations with Chechens, suggesting that this was equivalent to calling for negotiations with al Qaeda. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov complained that Western countries were giving asylum to Chechen separatists.
On September 16, 2004, a key advisor to President Putin, Aslakhanov, said that the president had been prepared to release 30 Chechens during the siege. Aslakhanov said that he was about to go into the school to talk to the hostage-takers, with whom he had spoken by phone three times, when the explosives went off.
The next day, Basayev, using the alias Abdallakh Shamil, said on Kavkaz-Center, an Islamic website based in Lithuania, that his group was responsible and threatened more attacks on Russian civilians if independence was denied. He said:
The Kremlin vampire destroyed and wounded one thousand children and adults by giving the order to storm the school for the sake of imperial ambitions. . . . We are sorry about what happened in Beslan. It’s simply that the war, which Putin declared on us five years ago, which has destroyed more than forty thousand Chechen children and crippled more than five thousand of them, has gone back to where it started.
The posting said that the terrorists “made a fatal mistake” by allowing a Russian emergency services vehicle onto school grounds to remove bodies of people killed in the initial storming of the building. He claimed that two terrorists who went outside to watch the removal of the bodies were shot by troops. He said that the terrorists had deployed 20 mines, connected together in one circuit. “I personally trained this group in a forest, and I tested this system. Either all bombs would have exploded or not a single one. . . . We suggest that independent experts should check the fragments and types of wounds,” implying that Russian bombs had killed the children. The posting claimed that there were 33 hostage-takers, including 2 Arabs. Basayev said that the operation cost 8,000 euros (circa $9,800) plus some weapons stolen from Russian forces. “I don’t know bin Laden, don’t receive any money from him, but would not mind.”
On January 29, 2005, the parliamentary investigating commission said that some law enforcement officers were involved. Two accomplices had been detained, three were being sought, and paperwork was in the process to arrest two more. On May 29, 2007, a Russian court granted amnesty to three police officers who had been charged with negligence for failing to prevent the attack.
On May 17, 2005, the trial began of lone surviving terrorist Kulayev on charges of murder and terrorism in the case. On May 16, 2006, the chief justice of the Supreme Court in North Ossetia ruled that Kulayev had taken part in murder and terrorism. On May 26, 2006, he was sentenced to life in prison.
Overview: In the United States, the al Qaeda attack on the homeland is called 9/11; in the United Kingdom, London’s emotional equivalent was 7/7 (and the failed copycat attack in late July). London was brought to a standstill with bombings of the subway and bus systems as thousands of Londoners wondered if they would be the next victims.
Incidents: On July 7, 2005, bombs exploded in three train stations and on a nearby double-decker bus, killing at least 49 people and wounding more than 700. (The tally eventually rose to 56 dead.) Several al Qaeda– affiliated groups, including the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, the Group of al Qaeda of Jihad Organization in Europe, and the Secret Organization of al Qaeda in Europe, claimed credit. Each device contained less than 10 pounds of explosives, enough to hide in a backpack. Timing devices apparently were used. Police worked with Spanish officials to determine whether there were links with the 3/11 Madrid train bombings in 2004.
The bombs were apparently to form a cross radiating from King’s Cross, but the plan was foiled when one terrorist could not get on a train and had to settle for a bus.
The bombings came a day after London was announced as the host for the 2012 Summer Olympics. They also came during the G-8 summit in Gleaneagles, Scotland, where world leaders held discussions about increasing aid to Africa.
The bombs were nearly simultaneous. First reports indicated that at 8:51 A.M., a bomb placed on the floor of the third carriage of Circle Line subway train 204 carrying seven hundred passengers went off 100 yards from the Liverpool Street Station, killing 7 and wounding 100. The train was arriving from Aldgate Station. Police identified the bomber as Shehzad Tanweer, son of the Pakistani owner of a Leeds fish-and-chips shop, and a good friend of fellow bomber Hasib Hussain. Tanweer was a student of physical education at Leeds Metropolitan University and lived in Leeds’ Beeston district. Pakistani authorities said Tanweer visited Pakistan in 2004 and met with Osama Nazir, who was later arrested and charged with a 2002 grenade attack on an Islamabad church in which five people, including two Americans, were killed. Tanweer also spent several days at a madrassa near Lahore that had ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba.
At 8:56 A.M., a device placed on the floor of the first carriage, near the first set of double doors where passengers stand, went off three minutes out of the Russell Square Station en route to King’s Cross Station, killing at least 21 people on the Piccadilly Line train 311. More than 900 passengers were on board. The bomber was identified by police as Germaine Lindsay (aka Abdullah Shaheed Jamal), a Jamaica-born British citizen who grew up in a single-parent household in southern England. He converted to Islam at the urging of his mother, who also converted.
At 9:17 A.M., a bomb placed on the floor of the second carriage of Circle Line train 216 leaving Edgware Road Station for Paddington Station exploded, killing seven people. The explosion ripped through a wall and damaged two other trains. The bomber was identified by police as Mohammed Sidique Khan, a teaching assistant at a Leeds public school. He was born in the United Kingdom to Pakistani parents. He was married and the father of an 8-month-old girl. He had recently moved to Dewsbury. He earned a degree in education from Leeds University. He traveled to Karachi, Pakistan, with Tanweer on November 16, 2004, on a Turkish Airlines flight. They had stayed at separate addresses near Lahore. The Sunday Telegraph said that Khan, the leader of the team, met in Pakistan in fall 2004 with Mohammed Yasin (alias Ustad Osama), an explosives expert who manufactures suicide jackets for Harkat-e-Jihad.
At 9:47 A.M., a bomb exploded on Bus No. 30 at Tavistock Square, killing 13 people. The bomb had been placed at the rear of the upper deck of the bus, which had been detoured because of the King’s Cross/Russell Square bombing. Some theorized that the bomber had intended to hit another train but was prevented from entering a train station when all had closed. Police said Hussain, an unemployed Muslim, then hopped on a bus and was attempting to reset the timer when the bomb went off. The Pakistani lived in Leeds and had completed vocational business studies at Matthew Murray High School. He became more religious two years earlier. He flew to Karachi, Pakistan, on a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight from Riyadh on July 15, 2004.
Killed and injured included citizens from Australia, China, Ghana, Portugal, Poland, and Sierra Leone.
On July 12, 2005, British police and army units raided six houses around Leeds, arresting a relative of one of the four suspected bombers and conducting a controlled detonation at one of the sites. Police said they found quantities of triacetone triperoxide, a highly volatile substance, at one of the houses.
On July 15, 2005, Cairo police arrested Magdy Mahmoud Nashar, a biochemist who had studied at North Carolina State University for a semester in 2000. He allegedly helped rent the terrorists’ Leeds town house.
Authorities were searching for a Pakistani man suspected of helping the terrorists who subsequently left the country on July 6, 2005. They were also searching for Mustafa Setmariam Naser, a Syrian–Spanish dual national who organized terrorist camps in Afghanistan and who was believed to be the mastermind behind the 3/11 Madrid train bombing in 2004. Also wanted was Zeeshan Hyder Siddiqui, 25, a Briton trained in bomb-making in an al Qaeda camp who was arrested in Pakistan in May 2005. He claimed to have lived in west London and studied economics at London University.
Police were searching for Haroon Rashid Aswat, who was raised in Batley, United Kingdom, and was an aide to Abu Hamza Masri, the radical Muslim preacher in London. Aswat had traveled to the United States and was involved in a plot to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon. He had also been in Pakistan, India, and other countries. His cell phone had received 20 calls from several of the London bombers. He comes from the same general area of West Yorkshire as three of the bombers; Khan lived closest to him. Aswat attended schools in Batley and Dewsbury and went to a technical college in Bradford. Zambian police arrested Aswat on July 20, 2005, as he was crossing into the country from Zimbabwe. He was deported to the United Kingdom on August 7, 2005, and arrested on U.S. warrants that he helped plan the terrorist training camp in Oregon. The United States requested his extradition from the United Kingdom.
On July 23, 2005, a 17-year-old male was remanded in custody and charged with an arson attack on the home of Germaine Lindsay, one of the bombers.
On August 24, 2005, Bangkok police arrested Atamnia Yacine, an Algerian, on charges of possessing 180 fake French and Spanish passports and overstaying his visa. Thai police believe he supplied the fake IDs used in the 7/7 attacks.
On September 1,2005, Al Jazeera aired footage by Khan, one of the bombers, who complained of “atrocities” against Muslims. “Until you will stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight. . . . We are at war, and I am a soldier and now you too will taste the reality of this situation.” He expressed admiration of Osama bin Laden. Al Jazeera also ran a tape from Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s deputy, calling the “glorious raid” an attack that “has moved our battle right to the enemy’s doorstep.” He said the bombings were “a slap in the face of the arrogant, crusader British rulers” and “a sip from the glass that the Muslims have been drinking from. . . . We have repeated again and again, and here we are warning one more time: All those who took part in the aggression on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, we will respond in kind.” On September 19, 2005, in a video broadcast by Al Jazeera, Zawahiri said, “The blessed London attack was one which al Qaeda was honored to launch against the British Crusader’s arrogance and against the American Crusader aggression on the Islamic nation for one hundred years.” He also questioned the Afghan elections and condemned the United Kingdom’s plan to deport Abu Qatada, an Islamic radical cleric.
In August 2005, a man captured north of Qaim, in western Iraq near the Syrian border, had a computer thumb drive that contained planning information for the 7/7 bombings. Police said he was connected to al Qaeda.
On May 11, 2006, two official reports by the Home Office and a parliamentary committee indicated that while two of the suicide bombers probably had contact with al Qaeda operatives during visits to Pakistan, there was no proof that the organization planned or directed the attacks. The reports said they acted on their own, because of “fierce antagonism to perceived injustices by the West against Muslims.” The government also said it had failed to follow up leads on bombers Khan and Tanweer.
On June 5, 2006, an official inquiry concluded that flawed emergency planning, jammed cell phone networks, and radio failures hampered emergency responders after the attack.
On July 5, 2006, Peter Clarke, deputy assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard in charge of antiterrorist operations, said that in the previous year, authorities had “disrupted three, and probably four, attack plans in the United Kingdom.”
On July 6, 2006, Al Jazeera ran a video of Tanweer, who said, “What you have witnessed now is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq and until you stop your financial and military support for America and Israel.” The tape included the presence of Adam Gadahn, a native Californian who works with al Qaeda.
During the British commemoration of the first anniversary of the bombing, an audiotape by Zawahiri indicated that Tanweer and Khan were trained in al Qaeda camps. “Shehzad’s motivation for going to the bases of Qaeda al-Jihad was the repression which the British are perpetrating in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine.”
On March 22, 2007, British police arrested three men “on suspicion of the commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism” in the attack. Mohammed Shakil, a Gee Gee cab driver, told his office that he was quitting his job to take leave for family reasons; he was due to fly to Pakistan from Manchester Airport, where he was arrested, as was his traveling companion, Shipon Ullah. The third man, Sadeer Saleem, was arrested in his Leeds house. On July 5, 2007, British authorities charged the trio with conspiring with the bombers between November 1, 2004, and June 29, 2005, saying they handled reconnaissance and planning. On August 10, 2007, Shakil, Saleem, and Waheed Ali pleaded not guilty of conspiracy to cause explosions “of a nature likely to endanger life or cause serious injury.” On April 28, 2009, a London retrial acquitted Shakil, Saleem, and Ali of aiding the bombers. Ali and Shakil were found guilty of other charges and were sentenced to seven years in prison.
On May 9, 2007, British police arrested three men and Hasina Patel Khan, widow of one of the bombers, on suspicion of commissioning, preparing, or instigating acts of terrorism by assisting the suicide bombers. Three people were picked up in the West Yorkshire region, specifically Dewsbury and Beeston near Leeds; the other in Birmingham, West Midlands. The other detainees were identified as Khalid Khaliq, who lived on the same street as bomber Tanweer; Arshad Patel, Ms. Patel’s brother; and Imran Motala.
On January 21, 2009, authorities in Peshawar, Pakistan, arrested Taifi, a Saudi from Taif who was believed involved in the subway bombings.
The case remains open.
Overview: Although the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel had been honored for several decades, terrorists nonetheless never gave up their quest for an end to the Israeli state and a free Palestine. This struggle included attacks within Israel, as well as on its borders. The most noteworthy attack occurred in the mid-2000s, when 88 people were killed in a resort town popular among foreign tourists.
Incident: On July 23, 2005, shortly after 1:00 a.m ., two bombs in two small green Isuzu pickups and a third bomb in a suitcase placed in a parking lot exploded in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, on the Red Sea, killing at least 88 people and injuring 119. Early reports suggested that there might have been seven explosions. Most of the dead were Egyptians, but seven foreigners died, including a Czech, an Italian, an American, and two Britons. The American, Kristina Miller, 27, from Las Vegas, was celebrating her birthday on a beach vacation with her boyfriend, Kerry Davies, one of the Britons who died. The wounded included nine Italians, five Saudis, seven Britons, a Russian, a Ukrainian, and an Israeli Arab.
The first bomb went off at 1:00 A.M. in the resort’s Old Market, bustling with shops and tourist attractions. At least 17 Egyptians were killed.
The second bomb went off a few minutes afterward at the Ghazala Gardens Hotel, a 176-room resort in Naama Bay. The hotel had been the site of several high-level diplomatic meetings. The driver of the car bomb crashed through a barrier along the hotel’s driveway, hit two cars, and drove into the hotel’s domed entrance near the reception area.
The third bomb exploded in the Moevenpick Hotel’s parking lot in Naama Bay.
Observers suggested that the bombings, like with the recent London subway bombings, had the hallmark of al Qaeda and might have been ordered by its leadership.
The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, also known as al Qaeda in Syria and Egypt, said on a website:
Your brother succeeded in launching a crushing blow on the Crusaders, Zionists, and the infidel Egyptian regime in Sharm el-Sheikh. We reaffirm that this operation was in response to the crimes committed by the forces of international evil, which are spilling the blood of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Chechnya.
The group had claimed credit for the earlier Taba bombings on October 7, 2004, and an April 2005 bombing in Cairo. The previously unknown Holy Warriors of Egypt (Mujahideen of Egypt) sent a fax to the Associated Press claiming credit and naming five bombers.
Police were searching for five Pakistanis who were part of a group of nine Pakistanis who arrived in Sharm el-Sheikh from Cairo on July 5, 2005. Police identified them as Mohammed Anwar, 30; Mohammed Aref, 26; Mohammed Akhtar, 30; Musaddeq Hussein, 18; and Rashid Ali, 26. Police ran DNA tests of the remains of an Egyptian and a foreigner suspected of being bombers. They identified the Egyptian as Moussa Badran, a resident of northern Sinai with links to Islamists. By July 26, 2005, authorities had detained 140 people.
A senior police official said that the terrorists intended to bomb the 292-room Iberotel Grand Sharm but were stopped at a checkpoint and set off their bombs in an arcade of shops. Police apparently had a tip on a planned attack against casinos several days before the hotel bombings. On July 27, 2005, police said they were searching for 15 Islamic militants and believed that the hotel attacks were tied to the resort attack in the fall of 2004.
On August 1, 2005, police surrounded Mohammed Saleh Flayfil, 30, a Bedouin wanted for this bombing and the 2004 Taba attacks in a quarry in Mount Ataqaa, 17 miles east of the Cairo–Suez highway. In a gun battle with police, Flayfil and his wife were killed and his daughter, 4, was wounded.
On August 12, 2005, Egyptian security forces separately arrested a man and a woman following a gun battle in which two police officers were wounded during a raid on the suspects’ Sinai hideout, 15 miles east of Ismailia.
On September 29, 2005, Egyptian police in the Sinai Peninsula shot to death Khaled Musaid and Tulub Murdi Suleiman in a gun battle in the Mount Halal area, near where fellow Sharm el-Sheik bombing suspect Moussa Badran had been shot earlier that day. The duo was suspected of having organized the bombing.
Overview: On November 26, 2008, 10 gunmen landed in the Mumbai, India, harbor and terrorized the city for almost three days. The terrorists carried photographs prepared by a U.S. citizen who had scouted the sea route from Pakistan to Mumbai and the sites to be attacked. Some of the terrorists had lived in Mumbai a few months earlier, pretending to be students and getting oriented to the sites. Sites where foreigners congregated were particularly targeted. The gunmen used electronic devices to communicate with each other and to monitor media coverage and police plans. They used Global Positioning System equipment, carried CDs with high-resolution satellite images, and switched SIM cards in multiple cell phones. When the smoke cleared, 195 people had been killed.
Incident: On November 26, 2008, at 9:00 P.M., at least 10 college-aged male terrorists deploying from Karachi, Pakistan, slit the throat of the captain of a fishing trawler named the Kuber and killed the four crew members. Upon arriving off the shore of Mumbai, India, they landed using a speedboat and a rubber dinghy, split up into four teams, and hailed taxis to get to their first targets. They attacked 10 public facilities, setting off explosives and firing automatic weapons. In the attacks and ensuing battles with Indian commandos, at least 195 people were killed and 350 people were wounded. At least 22 foreigners were killed, among them 6 Americans, a Briton, an Australian, a German, an Italian, and a Japanese citizen. Dozens of Indian and Western hostages were rescued.
At 9:30 P.M., the terrorists struck their first site, the Leopold Café, before moving on to the Taj, a restaurant frequented by tourists. Seven people were killed.
At 10:00 P.M., two gunmen attacked the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, killing 48 people and wounding many more in a 20-minute attack. Shashank Shinde, 46, was killed when he attempted to tackle the assault rifle-wielding terrorists. The two terrorists then fired at the Times of India and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai buildings. Next they killed three police officers and wounded a fourth for their police vehicle.
At 10:30 P.M., the same two gunmen attacked the Metro movie theater, throwing grenades and firing at passengers and pedestrians, killing 10 and injuring 30. Police intercepted them as they sped toward the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, killing one terrorist and arresting Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, 21, a Pakistani.
Meanwhile, at 10:15 P.M., at least two other gunmen attacked the 36-floor Oberoi Trident Hotel, killing 24 people in the initial assault. Terrorist Shadullah phoned Indian television from room 1856 to say:
We demand the release of all mujahideen put in jails. Then will we release these people. Otherwise, we will destroy this place. . . . You must have seen what’s happening here. . . . Release them, and we, the Muslims who live in India, should not be harassed. . . . Things like demolition of Babri Masjid and killings should stop.
At 10:40 A.M., on November 28, 2008, India’s National Security Guard killed two gunmen. By midnight of November 28, 2008, police had found 41 bodies and rescued 98 hostages. Among the dead were members of the Synchronicity Foundation, a Virginia-based meditation group.
Also at 10:15 P.M., at least three terrorists attacked the landmark Taj Hotel. The terrorists fired on diners at the Sea Lounge restaurant, aiming at tourists. Its 105-year-old Moorish-style rooftop dome was engulfed in flames and smoke. The terrorists knocked on doors of the 565-room hotel, calling for American and British citizens to come out. Some 250 guests, including Americans, Europeans, and South Koreans, were trapped 4 hours on the rooftop where they fled for safety. The commando rescue operation began at 4:30 A.M. A running gun battle ensued as hostages fled down the stairs and through windows. At 2:30 a.m. on November 28, 2008, after a 60-hour siege, Indian Marine commandos gained control. The commandos killed four terrorists. Four hundred hostages were freed. At least 11 commandos died in the gunfire, including Hemant Karkare, chief of Mumbai’s counterterrorism squad. More than 30 hostages were killed, including 10 kitchen staff. One wing of the hotel was gutted.
Between 10:45 and 11:15 P.M., terrorists attacked the Cama and Albless Hospital, where three hospital workers and two police officers died, and the Gokuldas Tejpal Hospital. Two terrorists were captured after they hijacked a police van to escape from the hospital.
At midnight, terrorists bombed the Mazgaon Dockyard.
The next morning on November 27, 2008, at 4:30 A.M., terrorists took hostages at the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish Center in the Nariman House business and residential complex, including eight Israelis and U.S. citizens Rabbi Gavriel N. Holtzberg, 29, and his wife, Rivka, 28. Terrorist Imran Babar phoned an Indian television station during the attack, citing the 2002 riots in Gujarat that killed more than 1,000 people, the 1992 destruction of the centuries-old Babri mosque by Hindu mobs, and India’s control over part of Kashmir.
Are you aware of how many people have been killed in Kashmir? Are you aware of how your army has killed Muslims? We die every day. It’s better to win one day as a lion than die this way.
Later that day, commandos surrounded the facility. The terrorists killed five hostages, including the rabbi and his wife. On November 28, 2008, at 11:30 A.M., commandos airlifted to the building’s roof and dropped smoke bombs. By 7:00 P.M., fighting was over. One commando died.
The northern district’s Ramada Hotel and the Vile Parle were also attacked.
At least 15 police officers died in the attacks, including Balasaheb Bhosale, a police official who tried to stop a gunman at a rail station. Sandeep Unnikrishnan died defending Indian civilians. Police later seized the explosives-laden Kuber.
On November 30, 2008, government officials said the official casualty numbers were 174 people dead and 239 wounded. Authorities said a third of the victims were Muslims. Indian Muslim leaders refused to permit the nine dead terrorists to be buried in Muslim cemeteries. Home Minister Shivraj Patil resigned.
Police said the nine dead gunmen came from central Punjab Province of Pakistan. They identified them as Abu Ismail, Hafiz Arshad, Babr Imran, Javed, Shoab, Nazih, Nasr, Abdul Rahman, and Fahad Ullah, all between 20 and 28 years old.
Surviving terrorist Kasab admitted membership in Lashkar (renamed Jamaat-ud-Dawa in 2005) and claimed that terrorist group members had trained for a year before the attack at four Lashkar camps near Muzzafrabad, Mansera, Muritke, and Karachi. On February 25, 2009, India charged Kasab with 13 crimes, including murder, “waging war against India,” and entering a train station without a ticket. Two unnamed Pakistani Army officials accused of training the gunmen were also charged. Indian citizens Fahim Ansari and Sabauddin were accused of providing maps for the attacks. The charge sheet ran to 11,280 pages, citing more than 2,000 witnesses and naming 37 others alleged to have planned the attacks.
During his trial, Kasab testified that Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi (variant Lakhwi), Pakistani head of the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, had plotted the attacks. Doctors declared Kasab of adult age when he claimed he was underage and could not be tried as an adult. After pleading guilty and stating he was “ready to die,” on December 18, 2009, he recanted his confession, saying he was a mere tourist and was tortured into the confession. The HBO documentary Terror in Mumbai reported that Kasab had been sold to the terrorists three months before the attack by his father so that his brothers and sisters could marry. On January 18, 2010, Kasab told the court that four of the gunmen were Indian, despite government claims that all of the terrorists were Pakistanis. On May 3, 2010, a Mumbai court issued a 1,522-page verdict that convicted Kasab of most of the eighty-six counts against him. He and an accomplice gunned down 58 people and wounded 104 others at the train station. The next day, he was sentenced to death. On February 21, 2011, the Mumbai High Court upheld Kasab’s death sentence. On November 21, 2012, Kasab was executed by hanging.
Others investigated, sought, charged, or arrested included Tauseef Rehman and Mukhtar Ahmed Sheikh for buying 22 SIM (subscriber identity cards) used by the terrorists; Laskar leaders Lakhvi, Yusuf Muzammil, and Hafiz Sayeed (on June 2, 2009, the Lahore High Court in Pakistan ruled that there was insufficient evidence to hold Sayeed); Jaish-i-Muhammad leader Masood Azhar; Lashkar detainee Zarar Shah (on December 31, 2008, Shah confessed to involvement in planning the attacks, according to Pakistani authorities); and Hamad Ameen Sadiq, shown by a trail of evidence followed by Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency officials to be the “main operator” of the conspiracy. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, cleric and head of the banned Jamaat-ud Dawa, was placed under house arrest in connection with the case by Pakistan on September 21, 2009. India said Saeed had masterminded the Mumbai siege. On October 12, 2009, a Lahore court dismissed all charges for lack of evidence. On May 25, 2010, Pakistan’s Supreme Court confirmed the ruling.
By February 12, 2009, Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik had admitted that “some part of the conspiracy has taken place in Pakistan.” On November 25, 2009, a court in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, charged seven individuals with acts of terrorism, money laundering, supplying funds for terrorism, and providing tools for terrorism. All pleaded not guilty. They all faced the death penalty. They were identified as mastermind Lakhvi, Umar Abjul Wajid, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jameel Ahmed, Mohammad Younas Anjum, Mazhar Iqbal, and Sadiq. A November 2009 HBO documentary reported the terrorists called themselves the Army of the Righteous.
On December 9, 2009, U.S. citizen David Coleman Headley was charged in Chicago with videotaping targets—including the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, the Leopold Café, the Jewish outreach center, and the train station—and briefing the Mumbai attackers. Authorities said he even took boat trips to scout out the town’s main harbor, a trip the terrorists later took on the operation. After pleading not guilty, on January 14, 2010, Headley was recharged along with Tahawwur Hussain Rana in a 12-count indictment that included a violent attack on Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten along with helping in the Mumbai attack.
On March 18, 2010, Headley pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Chicago to charges that he had scouted the targets for the Mumbai attack and planned the Danish newspaper attack. In a plea agreement, Headley agreed to testify against codefendant Rana. The Department of Justice agreed not to seek the death penalty. The United States granted access to Indian, Pakistani, and Danish investigators but not extradition. The plea agreement indicated that he was in contact with an al Qaeda cell in Europe. On January 24, 2013, Headley was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Epilogue: On April 25, 2011, prosecutors in the U.S. District Court in Chicago charged four Pakistanis—Sajid Mir, Abu Qahafa, Mazhar Iqbal, and Major Iqbal—in a superseding indictment with some combination of aiding and abetting the murder of U.S. citizens in India; conspiracy to murder, maim, and bomb public places; and providing material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba in connection with the Mumbai attack. None were in U.S. custody. Headley claimed that Major Iqbal was a member of Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Prosecutors said Mir was Headley’s handler; Qahafa trained others in combat techniques; and Mazhar Iqbal was a Lashkar commander who passed messages to Headley via defendant Rana.
On May 23, 2011, Headley told the Chicago court in Rana’s trial that the ISI recruited him and played a key role in the Mumbai attacks. He told the court that “ISI provided assistance to Lashkar: financial, military, and moral support.” He said that ISI Major Iqbal chose the targets—including the Chabad House—route, and safe house, and that Iqbal was involved in the plot to attack Jyllands-Posten in Denmark.