Were All Hijackers in on Suicide Pact?: ... nearly five weeks later, FBI investigators and their European counterparts are considering another scenario: that many of the hijackers did not know they were going to die. Some evidence, combined with knowledge of how Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network has operated in the past, has led some investigators to suggest that as many as 13 members of the four terrorist teams may have believed they were part of a traditional hijacking operation aimed at landing and issuing demands.
It's a pity there will never be conclusive evidence of this, one way or the other. Or that it couldn't be gathered from some demonstrably neutral source; after all, coming from the US, it can be dismissed as propaganda.
But it would damage the recruitment effort if it could be proved that people were going to be lied to in order to get them to die the glorious martyr's death. Not that many of them wouldn't choose such a death in any event; it's the deception that would cause the damage.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!