Target no. 1: Bush
צילום: איי פי
Report: Al-Qaeda plotted Bush assassination
New York’s Daily News says plot thwarted with apprehension of Osama Bin Laden’s top operational commander, Abu Faraj al-Libi, who also organized several failed attempts to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
Senior al-Qaeda members plotted to assassinate President George W. Bush, New York’s Daily News reported.
According to the report, the plan was thwarted with the apprehension of Osama Bin Laden’s top operational commander, Abu Faraj al-Libi.
Al-Libi was nabbed six months ago in Pakistan for organizing several failed attempts to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf.
“"Al-Libi had one mission: Kill Bush and Musharraf," the Daily News quoted a Pakistani official as saying.
A senior U.S. counterterrorism official confirmed, saying, “He wanted to kill Bush in the White House, preferably. It was clearly something they wanted to do. There's no question about that. It's the holy grail of jihad."
While al-Libi was apprehended last May, his plan to send assassins to the U.S. to kill Bush was only disclosed this week.
Officials said it was not known if Bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, personally ordered Al-Libi to hit the U.S. President, the report said.
According to the Daily News, officials revealed that two years before Al-Libi's capture by Pakistani and CIA operatives in Pakistan's mountainous North-West Frontier province, near where many believe Bin Laden is hiding, American officials were informed by Musharraf envoys that the top Al Qaeda member was bent on assassinating Bush.
Al-Libi replaced September 11 attacks mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was captured in Pakistan in March 2003. Al-Libi's aide and successor, Abu Hamza Rabia, was killed this month in Pakistan by a missile fired from an unmanned CIA predator drone, sources said.
