Qatar has been involved in the September 11 attacks and other major terrorist attacks in the world, according to a report in the New York Daily. The paper said Qatar has a long history of sympathizing with terrorists. It has been pursuing this pro-terror policy for at least two decades. Qatar has even served as a sanctuary for leaders of violent groups which the US or other countries have deemed to be terrorist organizations. One of these leaders was an architect of the 9/11 attacks. The paper quoted Richard Clarke, former chairman of the US Counter-Terrorism Security Group, as saying, "Most people associate the name of Osama Bin Laden with the 9/11mass murder, but another man, a serial terrorist, was the real ringleader. I first learned of his name, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (KSM), in 1993 as someone connected to the truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center. By 1996, we considered him the most dangerous individual terrorist at large." Clarke revealed that they found KSM holed up in Qatar, where he was given a job in the Water Department. We could not trust the Qatar government. We could not ask Doha to do the obvious – that is, to arrest him and hand him over. One cabinet member belonging to the ruling family even seemed to have ties to groups like Al-Qaeda, and is said to have sponsored KSM. Clarke said they in the Security Group had decided to snatch KSM with the help of a US raiding team, and fly him immediately to the US. But no US agency thought it could successfully pull off such a snatch. "The US embassy in Qatar was then only a small State Department office. There was no FBI liaison office, no defense attaché, no CIA station," Clarke noted. Faced with this problem, the Clinton Administration was left with only one option – to have the US ambassador request the Qatari Emir to arrest KSM for a few hours until an American team flies him out to US. "But within hours of the US ambassador meeting with the Emir, KSM went underground. No one was able to find him. Later, the Qataris told us that they believe he had left the country. They never told us how," Clarke said. Other than organizing the 9/11 attacks, he was the brain behind the Bali bombing, the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl, and many other terrorist attacks. In 2003, he was apprehended in Pakistan by US officials, accompanied by Pakistani officers. He is today in Guantanamo, Cuba. Had the Qataris handed him over to us as requested in 1996, the world might have been a very different place, Clarke concluded.
