September 5, 2003	Friday	Rajab 7, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Sept 4: The Pakistan Air Force on Thursday defended its former chief, the late Air Chief Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, against what it called the baseless allegation that he had assured support to Al Qaeda.

A PAF statement called the allegation, made in an American author’s book reviewed by the Time magazine last week, a plot to discredit the PAF as a professional fighting force.

The book Why America Slept, by Gerald Posner, quoted a captured lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, Abu Zubaydah, as having told US interrogators that Air Chief Marshal Mir had agreed to provide protection, arms and supplies to Al Qaeda.

Air Chief Marshal Mir was killed in a PAF plane crash near Kohat on Feb 20 with his wife and 15 other PAF personnel.

“The Pakistan Air Force is deeply pained by these baseless allegations against our shaheed air chief who had a proven track record of highest professionalism, extreme patriotism, balanced religious beliefs and, above all, a person who always put Pakistan first,” the statement said.

A US intelligence official has already dismissed these charges as “absurd” and “utter nonsense”.

“Individuals like Gerald Posner knit any number of scenarios to sell books and magazines by scaring Americans and Western public,” it said. “Any sane person knows that non-state actors carried out the attacks on 9/11, and states or governments had nothing to do with the planning or execution of these attacks.”