‘Operation Holy Tuesday’ code name for 9/11 attacks

THE September 11 attacks were given the code name ‘Operation Holy Tuesday’ and precisely planned at an al-Qaida meeting in Malaysia chaired by terror mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it has emerged.

The purpose of the three day secret conference in January 2000, which was monitored by Malaysian police at the CIA's request, was to discuss details of how the hijackers should train and hide in the United States and how the attacks should be carried out.

"This was the first planning meeting of the 9/11 operation. It was to review the progress they had achieved on the operation and to map out their future course of action," Rohan Gunaratna, a leading expert on Osama bin Laden, said after appearing before the US commission probing 9/11.

The meeting of terrorists in Malaysia has previously been disclosed, but Gunaratna added new details, such as the involvement of Khalid Mohammed. Also, the name of the attacks, 'Operation Holy Tuesday', has not been previously known.

Gunaratna is a counter-terrorism consultant for the US and British governments who says he has had access to records of interrogations of captured al-Qaida leaders.

Mohammed was in charge of the Malaysia meeting and told some of the other terrorists there the targets would include the World Trade Center and the date of the attacks would be September 11, 2001, Gunaratna said.

"He was the emir the leader of the operation called 'Operation Holy Tuesday'. Certainly, they all knew it was a martyrdom operation."

His statements reveal bin Laden's terror team picked the date of the 9/11 attacks nearly two years before those strikes were carried out, dispelling theories the hijackers acted on their own and might have accelerated their plans after Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested in August 2001.

US authorities claim Moussaoui plotted to take part in 9/11.

Gunaratna said of Moussaoui: "He had a vision of crashing a plane on the White House, but his colleagues did not take him seriously."