A former Osama bin Laden associate has said that the Al Qaeda leader did not expect the United States to strike back as hard as it has following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
“What happened after September 11 was beyond
their imagination,” The New York Post quoted Noman Benotman, who was the head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in 2000, as having told the WTOP Radio.
Benotman said Al Qaeda was overly confident based on the US response to the attacks carried out by the group on their embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. “I’m 100 per cent sure they had no clue about what was going to happen.”
Meanwhile, a former Central Intelligence Agency official also backed Bentoman’s claims. “Several captured terrorists have said publicly that Al Qaeda never expected the towers to fall. Their goal was to frighten people and impact the US economy, so they really didn’t plan for the massive response the US launched,” the official said.