SEAN SEDDON FROM METRO
British officials backed a plan to ‘whack’ Osama Bin Laden months before the September 11 attacks.
Newly declassified documents reveal there was supportive talk about assassinating the Al Qaeda leader at the highest levels of government in December 2000.
By then Bin Laden was already on the FBI’s most wanted list and had claimed responsibility for atrocities in the Middle East and Africa.
The talks were happening against the backdrop of explosions at American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed more than 200 people in August 1998.
Extremists also murdered 17 sailors in October 2020 when a bomb carried by a small boat detonated alongside a US navy vessel, the USS Cole.
Two weeks after the embassy bombings, US cruise missiles destroyed Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan but failed to kill its leader.
Now papers released by The National Archive confirm there were active discussions about a fresh hit on Bin Laden during a period when, unbeknown to Western intelligence services, he was plotting the September 11 hijackings.
A note written by John Sawers, then a foreign policy advisor to Tony Blair, read: ‘We’re all in favour of whacking [Bin Laden] but we need a bit of notice and a chance to influence the timing.’
