Question:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair concluded his presentation of the evidence by stating: "No other organization has both the motivation and the capability to carry out attacks like those of the 11 September, only the al Qaeda network under Osama bin Laden." Is it true that no other organization has such capabilities or motives?

Answer:

In fact, there are many organizations, including state intelligence services, that have the capacity for recruiting suicidists, providing them with the wherewithal for seizing airliners and financing their activities (which involved somewhere between $200,000 and $500,000).

They have a large pool of suicidist volunteers. According to Janes' Report, in the ten years prior to the September 11th attack, there were 271 suicide bombings. Bin Laden and al-Qaida were credited with two. The other 269 were conducted by nine terrorist groups: the Islam Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad of the Israeli occupied territories; Hizbullah of Lebanon; the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) and Gamaya Islamiya (Islamic Group - IG) of Egypt; the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) of Algeria; Barbar Khalsa International (BKI) of India; the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of Sri Lanka; and the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) of Turkey. And this 269 does not include failed suicidists attempts, for example the GIA in 1994 hijacked an Air France airbus to Marseilles, demanded a full tank of fuel and aimed to blow up the airliner with its 283 passengers over Paris or crash it into the Eiffel Tower (before French commandos stormed the plane) and Abu Sayyaf, a Moslem group in The Philippines in 1995 organized a plot to hijack several planes and crash one into CIA headquarters.

Moreover, many state intelligence services, including those of Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran, have the capabilities to recruit suicidists under either their own flag or under false flags. They also have the means to secretly train them and provide them with money, fake IDs and surreptitious weapons. Iraq, for example, according to defectors, uses a Boeing 707 to practice on at its anti-terrorist training base near Salman Pak.

Any of the parties might have had a conceivable motive. As yet, the actual motive for 9/11 attack is not known (and, for that matter, may not have been known to the suicidists about the planes).