Al Qaeda publishes book with details on planning 9/11 attacks

The Al Qaeda terrorist organization has published Sunday a book written by a leader of the group with details on the preparation of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on the 21st anniversary of this action.

The 250-page text would be the work of Abu Mohamed al Masri, a senior member of the jihadist organization who died in 2020 in Iran. Al Masri relates that the attacks began to be prepared when they managed to settle in Afghanistan, in 1996, and that they sought to drag the United States into a long war of attrition.

The idea came about when an Egyptian pilot considered crashing a civilian plane with thousands of liters of fuel into “an important and symbolic U.S. building,” explains the book, now published by Al Qaeda’s communications arm, As Sahab.

Thus, some militiamen underwent special combat training in 1998 and then signed up for flight schools in different parts of the world.

Finally on September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda militiamen hijacked four civilian airliners at different locations in the United States.

Two of them were crashed into each of the Twin Towers in New York, another was crashed into the Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense, and the last one crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers cut down the hijackers to prevent a further attack.

These attacks triggered the invasion of Afghanistan, and what the United States has called the “war on terror.” Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. military operation in Pakistan in 2011, and his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed on July 31 in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, the Afghan capital.