WASHINGTON - A small group of Al-Qaeda operatives was plotting chilling follow-up attacks after September 11 before they were detained at Guantanamo, leaked documents on the US facility revealed Tuesday.
The New York Times, one of several media outlets to have obtained the WikiLeaks documents, said a small group around September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed aspired to stage attacks involving weapons of mass destruction. Other documents leaked by the whistle-blower website reveal that the United States botched the handling of Guantanamo inmates, holding some for years without reliable evidence and releasing others who posed a grave threat. But the Times cited files saying that Saifullah Paracha, 63, one of 172 prisoners still held at Guantanamo, had offered to help ship plastic explosives into the United States in containers of women's and children's clothing. "Detainee desired to help Al Qaeda 'do something big against the US,'" one of his co-conspirators, Ammar al-Baluchi, told interrogators, according to files quoted by the Times. Paracha discussed obtaining biological or nuclear weapons, but worried that detectors at ports "would make it difficult to smuggle radioactive materials into the country," the file says. The leaked documents detail plots discussed by Mohammed and other operatives, including plans for aircraft attacks on the US West Coast, blowing up an apartment filled with leaked gas, detonating gas stations, and even cutting the cables holding up New York's Brooklyn Bridge, the Times reported. Mohammed reportedly told interrogators a nuclear bomb had been hidden somewhere in Europe to be detonated if Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is ever caught or killed. He also alleged he had set up two cells to attack London's Heathrow airport in 2002, planning to crash a hijacked airliner into one of the terminals. Paracha reportedly continued planning attacks after September 11, 2001 and, according to an assessment cited by the Times, claimed to have met with nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. He also carried a digital diary that contained references to the effects of military chemical warfare agents on humans, according to the Times. Human rights groups have long criticized the Guantanamo detention facility -- which was set up after the September 11 attacks to hold alleged militants swept up on battlefields in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- as a legal black hole. The Times quoted David Remes, a lawyer for Paracha, as denying that his client posed a high risk to the United States. "The notion that he ever did anything that justified his detention, or ever was or is any kind of threat to the United States, is preposterous," it quoted him as saying. "He is a 63-year-old man with a serious heart condition and severe diabetes, and he has been nothing but cooperative with the authorities." President Barack Obama has tried to close the controversial Guantanamo prison and his administration denounced the "unfortunate" release of the classified documents. AFP