Jump to content

Bojinka plot

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by WhisperToMe (talk | contribs) at 22:39, 15 November 2003. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Project Bojinka, also Operation Bojinka, (pronounced Bo-GIN-ka) was a project in making a large-scale terrorist attack previous to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks. Project Bojinka was prevented but plans and lessons learned were used for the Sept. 11 attacks.

The project was being developed by Al-Qaeda operatives Ramzi Youssef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed while they were in Manila, Philippines. Bojinka is a Croatian word for "loud bang" or "explosion".

Financing

Wali Khan Amin Shah, an Afghan, was the financier of the project. He funded the project by laundering money through his girlfriend and other Manila women, one of whom was an employee at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. The transfers were small, equivalent to 500 to 1000 dollars and would be handed over each night at a Wendy's or a karaoke bar.

Phase I

The first phase of the project would have involved at least five Al Qaeda operatives. They would set the bombs on 11 United States-bound airliners that had stopovers all around East Asia. Here is a list of which flights each operative would target. All of the flights had two legs. The bombs would be planted on the first leg, when each terrorist would disembark. Each terrorist would then catch flights to Lahore, Pakistan.

Here are two of the flights that were targeted by Bojinka:

One of the flights is United Flight 808. Another flight is Northwest Flight 6.

Other airports that Bojinka flights were to never arrive at were Honolulu International Airport of Honolulu, Hawaii and John F. Kennedy International Airport of New York, New York.

United States airlines had been chosen instead of Asian airlines to maximize the shock towards Americans. The flights targeted were listed under operatives with codenames, such as "Zyed", "Majbos" or "Obaid". Obaid was to hit United flight 80, and Zyed was to hit Northwest Flight 30.

After flying to Lahore, the operatives would detonate the bombs. The aircraft would have blown up over a two day period over the Pacific Ocean on January 21, 1995. If this plan worked, several thousand would have perished, and air travel would have been shut down worldwide for days, if not weeks. The U.S. government estimated the death toll to be about 5,000.

The "Mark II" bombs had Casio watches as the timers, cotton-ball stabilizers, and an undetectable nitroglycerin liquid concealed in a contact lens solution bottle as the explosive. Batteries taken from children's toys were used as the power source

On December 11, 1994, Youssef built his first bomb in the lavatory of the aircraft and left it under his seat, 27F, after he got off the plane from a flight that arrived in Cebu. The next flight that the aircraft was on was Philippine Airlines Flight 434 using that aircraft on a Cebu - Ninoy Aquino International Airport, near Manila, - New Tokyo International Airport, Narita, near Tokyo, Japan route. Yousef had set the timer for four hours after he got off the aircraft.

The bomb exploded while the aircraft was over Okinawa, Japan. The Japanese businessman in the seat where the bomb was killed when the bomb detonated. The Boeing 747-200 safely made an emergency landing. None of the aircraft's other two-hundred and eighty six passengers were injured. Since the bomb did not destroy the aircraft, Youssef then tried to increase the bomb's power for his newer bombs. Yousef then set the charges and planned which flights to attack.

Also part of Phase I was a plan to kill Pope John Paul II when he visited the Philippines. Earlier, Yousef thought about killing United States President Bill Clinton, but he decided against it.

Phase II

Phase two would have involved Abdul Hakim Murad, his friend, hijacking a small airplane. The airplane would be filled with explosives. He would then crash it into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Murad had been trained as a pilot in North Carolina, and was slated to be a suicide pilot.

Phase III

Phase three would involve hijacking of more airplanes. The Sears Tower (Chicago, Illinois), the Pentagon, the Washington Capitol, the White House, the Transamerica Tower, and the World Trade Center would be the likely targets.

Death of the project

The project was abandoned after an apartment fire occured during the night in Manila, Philippines on Friday, January 5, 1995. The fire occurred one to two weeks before the Pope, John Paul II, was scheduled to visit the Philippines. Also, a typhoon had hit Manila not that long ago before the fire. The incident took place at six-story Dona Josefa apartment was located two-hundred miles away from the embassy of the Vatican City in the Philippines, and was 500 meters down the street from Manila Police Station No. 9 on Quirino Avenue. Middle Easterners often rented units there to hang out at nightclubs such as the Malate nighclub, which are often nonexistant in their home countries.

The fire was started when one of Youssef's friends started a chemical fire in the kitchen sink in Suit 603 in the Dona Josefa apartment. The smoke came when water was poured on to douse the fire. Police, including watch commander Aida Fariscal, first found four hot plates in their packing crates, cotton soaked in a beige soluton, and loops of green, red, blue, and yellow electrical wiring. The telephone rang, and the police ran downstairs thinking that it was a trap. The police then arrested pilot Ahmed Saeed. He offered the equivalent of two thousand dollars to the policemen if they let him go, but the officers would refuse to let him go. The officers encountered Ramzi Yousef as well, although they did not know who he was at the time, and they let him go. The police grew suspicious when Saeed mumbled that "two Satans that must be destroyed: the Pope and America."

When the officers returned to Suit 603 at 2:30 a.m., they found also street maps of Manila with routes plotting the papal motorcade, a rosary, a photograph of the pontiff, a rosary, a bible, and clothes similar to those worn by the entourage. A phone message from the tailor reminding the occupant that the cassock was ready to be tried on suggested to the senior inspector that an assasination attempt was going to be placed on the Pope. A search warrant was granted by 4 A.M.

More chemicals, such as gallons of sulphuric, puric, and nitric acid, pure glycerin, acetone, sodium trichlorate, nitrobenzoyl, ammonia, large cooking kettles, funnels, fuses, filters, silver nitrates, methanamine, and ANFO binary explosive were found. Some of those chemicals were concocted into a smoking mixture of explosives in the kitchen sink. Equipment such as funnels, thermometers, graduated cylinders, beakers, mortars, pestles, different electronic fusing systems, timers, circuit breakers, and a box of Rough Rider lubricated condoms were found. The most damning piece of evidence found so far was a manual written in Arabic on how to build a liquid bomb. Casio watches were found in the apartment, which linked Yousef to the small bombing of the Philippines Airlines flight to Tokyo. Stacks of Norwegian, Afghan, Saudi, Pakistani, and other passports were also found in the apartment.

Yousef's pet project was discovered on four floppy diskettes and a laptop computer inside his apartment, two weeks before it would have been implemented. The first string of text spells, "All people who support the U.S. government are our targets in our future plans and that is because all those people are responsible for their government's actions and they support the U.S. foreign policy and are satisfied with it. We will hit all U.S. nuclear targets If the U.S. government keeps supporting Israel, then we will continue to carry out operations inside and outside the United States to include ..." and the text ends.

A file named "Bojinka" lists the eleven flights between Asia and the United States, which were grouped under five codenames. Strings were found, such as "SETTING: 9:30 PM to 10:30 PM. TIMER: 23HR. BOJINKA: 20:30-21:30 NRT Date 5" (for United flight 80), and "SETTING: 8:30-9:00. TIMER: 10HR. BOJINKA: 19:30-20:00 NRT Date 4" (for Northwest Flight 30).

The police determined that the men who were planning this either had ties to Al Qaeda, Iran, Iraq, and/or Pakistan.

Saeed turned out to be Abdul Hakim Murad, who was sent to the apartment to retrieve the computer after the fire. Murad was sent to Camp Crane, a military installation that was on the outskirts of Manila. For sixty-seven days, he endured a torture process called "tactical interrogation." When Murad did not talk, agents hit him with a chair and long piece of wood. They forced water into his mouth, and crushed cigarette lights onto his genitals. Agents were surprised that he survived. Murad confessed that he was on a quest to be a martyr. He confessed to being the hijacker as part of Phase II of his plan. Murad would later be extradited to the United States. His testimony would help convict Yousef.

Wali Khan Amin Shah, the financier, would get picked up in Malaysia. Yousef would later be arrested in Karachi, Pakistan. Yousef later boasted to FBI agent Brian Parr about his plan.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed would pull off the September 11 Terrorist attacks, which were similar to Project Bojinka. He too would be arrested. Some felt that Project Bojinka should have raised flags that would have prevented September 11.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bojinka_plot&oldid=1744366"