Al Qaeda rehearsed assassinations: TV

Published January 15, 2002

SYDNEY, Jan 14: The Australian Broadcasting Corp claimed on Monday it had obtained a video showing Al Qaeda members rehearsing an attack on world leaders at a golf tournament and on a motorcade in what appears to be Washington.

The ABC broadcast extracts from the video late on Sunday night and said the tape would be sent to the United States.

The grainy video, in which ABC said Arab, Pakistani and African fighters spoke in English, was discovered by the Northern Alliance in an abandoned school turned training camp near Kabul shortly after the hardline Taliban fled the Afghan capital.

Running for more than six hours, it shows al Qaeda members rehearsing hostage-taking scenarios and assassinations, according to the extracts.

In one scene, the scenario looked like a Washington D.C. road system, ABC said.

In another, trainees with weapons hidden in golf bags carried out a rocket launcher attack on dummies meant apparently to represent world leaders at a golf tournament. —Reuters

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