United Nations: India has denounced Pakistan over its links with “the worst of humanity”, the al-Qaida terrorists who killed thousands in the US 25 years ago in the September 11 attacks.
Recalling the Security Council’s visit to the hallowed 9/11 memorial last week, India’s Permanent Representative P. Harish said Wednesday (local time), “May the memory of these victims always remain a motivation to not only fight against all such individuals who are the worst of humanity, but also those who aid, abet, finance and support their crimes.”
Diplomatically, he did not name Pakistan while speaking at the Council’s meeting on the situation in Afghanistan, but listed the al-Qaida terrorist leaders behind the 9/11 attack who received its assistance and protection to drive home Islamabad’s link.
Al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four planes September 11, 2001, and rammed two of them into New York’s World Trade Centre and one into the Pentagon in the Washington area.
Another plane that was likely headed to Washington crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers overpowered the hijackers, foiling the planned attack.
Harish also drew attention to the axis of terror of Pakistan, al-Qaida and the terrorists attacking India.
“The same permissive environment that sheltered the architects of 9/11 has, in the years since, continued to provide space, support, and impunity to affiliates of Al Qaeda such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed and their like”, he said.
They continue to operate using different identities to escape Council’s sanctions, and their terror training infrastructure continues to operate with impunity, he said.
The international community must act against the continued existence of such sanctuaries, he said, “to ensure that more such individuals are not thrust upon any country or its citizens and no one loses family and loved ones”.
The Lashkar-e-Tayiba carried out the Mumbai massacres in 2008, and its proxy, The Resistance Front, took responsibility for the religiously motivated attack on tourists in Pahalgam in 2025, while there have been scores of other attacks by the Pakistan-based groups through the decades.
To facilitate the 9/11 attacks, Harish reminded the Council, “al-Qaida’s terror ecosystem established its strategic depth beyond Afghanistan through its affiliates” and “the leaders of al-Qaida who conceived and directed these 9/11 attacks did not escape justice in the wilderness of some ungoverned frontier”.
The strategic depth of then-Afghanistan-based al-Qaida was in Pakistan.
Harish identified the terrorists found living in Pakistan, but did not name the place they were found in.
This is the list of terror leaders he mentioned, and IANS has added the places they were discovered living with Pakistani protection and when they were captured:
Osama bin Laden, who ordered and financed the plot, was tracked down to a fortified compound in Abbottabad by an elite team of US Navy SEALs in Operation Neptune Spear in 2011.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 9/11’s principal architect, was out by the Central Intelligence Agency at a house in Rawalpindi in 2013.
Ramzi Binalshibh, who coordinated the terrorists who hijacked the four jetliners for the 9/11 attack, was sheltering in Karachi when he was found in 2002. He was known as the “20th hijacker” because he could not get a US visa to join the terrorist team.
Walid bin Attash, the senior al-Qaida leader who helped select and prepare several hijackers, was captured in Karachi in 2003.
Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, who was in charge of the finances and logistics of the 9/11 attack, was discovered in Rawalpindi in 2003.
They “were not fugitives hiding in caves or badlands; they were men who had long evaded detection”, Harish said.
Calling for action against Pakistan for supporting and sheltering terrorists, Harish said, “Draining this swamp that provided an enabling environment for such monsters of humankind to prosper is important”.
