Al-Qaida 'has not ruled out attack on nuclear facilities'

Al-Qaida considered striking US nuclear facilities as it planned its assault on New York and Washington and has not ruled out nuclear attacks in the future, according to a reporter’s account of his interview with two September 11 plotters.

Al-Jazeera television correspondent Yosri Fouda said al Qaida contacted him to arrange the interview at a secret location in Pakistan with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh in June.

He said he waited until now to air the interview _ it is scheduled to appear on Thursday on al-Jazeera _ because he wanted to include it in a documentary marking the first anniversary of the attacks.

A videotape of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden released by US officials in December for many established al-Qaida’s responsibility for September 11. Fouda’s interviews with Mohammed and Binalshibh established the link even more clearly.

US officials regard Mohammed as one of the highest-ranking al Qaida leaders still at large and believe he is still planning attacks against US interests. US officials say Binalshibh was a member of a Hamburg-based cell led by Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian-born suspected leader of the September 11 hijacks.

“I am the head of the al-Qaida military committee and Ramzi (Binalshibh) is the coordinator of the ‘Holy Tuesday’ operation,” Fouda quoted Mohammed as saying. September 11, 2001 fell on a Tuesday.

Mohammed said planning began two-and-a-half years before September 11 and that the first targets considered were nuclear facilities.

We “decided against it for fear it would go out of control,” Fouda quoted Mohammed as saying. “You do not need to know more than that at this stage, and anyway it was eventually decided to leave out nuclear targets _ for now.”

Fouda said at one point, while he was being led blindfolded to the meeting, he thought he was going to meet Osama bin Laden.

Fouda, speaking by telephone from London, said during the two days he spent talking to the two, Mohammed once referred to bin Laden in the past tense and that a sense of disarray led him to believe bin Laden could be dead.

Mohammed and Binalshibh never sent him promised videotapes of the interview Fouda said. He has only audiotapes.

Fouda, the Egyptian reporter and host of al-Jazeera’s investigative programme Top Secret, said he flew to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, and from there to Karachi on al-Qaida instructions. In Karachi, he was taken blindfolded and via a complicated route to an apartment where he met the two men he recognised as Mohammed and Binalshibh.

Al-Jazeera had announced last week it will broadcast the interviews as part of its coverage marking the anniversary of the attacks against the World Trade Centre and Pentagon.

Fouda wrote about the interview for today’s Sunday Times.

He wrote he learned in the interviews that the US Congress had been the fourth target.

Fouda also learned Atta had been a sleeper operative in Germany since 1992 and started detailed planning with a 1999 meeting in Afghanistan with other sleepers.

Once in the United States, Atta communicated with higher ranking al-Qaida officials via e-mail, Fouda wrote. But when he had determined everything was ready, he telephoned Binalshibh in Germany to tell him the date, using a riddle that referred to the shapes of the numbers 9 and 11.