Bojinka plot Totally Explained

Everything about Project Bojinka totally explained

The Bojinka Plot was a planned large-scale terrorist attack by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to blow up eleven airliners and their approximately 4000 passengers as they flew from Asia to the United States. The term can also refer to a combination of plots by Yousef and Mohammed to take place in January 1995, including a plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II and crash a plane into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, as well as the airline bombing plot.
Despite careful planning and the skill of Ramzi Yousef, the Bojinka plot was disrupted after a chemical fire drew Filipino police attention on January 6 and January 7, 1995. Only one person was actually killed in the course of the plot - a passenger seated near a nitroglycerin bomb on Philippine Airlines Flight 434 - but some lessons learned were apparently used by the planners of the September 11 attacks.
The money handed down to the plotters originated from Al-Qaeda, the international Islamic jihadi organization then based in Sudan.

Terminology and etymology

The plot is also known as Oplan Bojinka, Operation Bojinka, Project Bojinka, and Bojinga.
Several media outlets, including Time Asia, observed that the word Bojinka means "loud bang" or "explosion" in Serbian. In the closely related Croatian dialect, "bočnica" translates into English as "boom". Oplan Bojinka co-plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would have encountered the Serbo-Croatian language when he fought for and financially supported Muslim fighters in Bosnia (External Link

).
Endnote 7 of Chapter 5 of the 9/11 Commission Report states that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claims that "Bojinka" is "a nonsense word he adopted after hearing it on the front lines in Afghanistan."

Financing

The money that funded Oplan Bojinka came from Osama bin Laden and Hambali, and from front organizations operated by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law. Wali Khan Amin Shah, an Afghan, was the financier of the plot. He funded the plot by laundering money through his girlfriend and other Manila women, several of whom were bar hostesses and one of whom was an employee at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. They were bribed with gifts and holiday trips so that they'd open bank accounts to stash funds.
The transfers were small, equivalent to about 12,000 to 24,000 Philippine pesos (500 to 1000 U.S. dollars), and would be handed over each night at a Wendy's or a karaoke bar. The funds went to "Adam Sali", an alias used by Ramzi Yousef. The money came through a Filipino bank account owned by Syrian Omar Abu Omar, who worked at International Relations and Information Centre, an Islamic organization run by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa.
A company called Konsojaya also provided financial assistance to the Manila cell by laundering money to it. Konsojaya was a front company that was started by the head of the group Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesian named Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali. Wali Khan Amin Shah was on the board of directors of the company.

Planning of Oplan Bojinka

As soon as Yousef arrived in Manila along with other so-called "Arab Afghans" that were making cells in Manila, he started to work on making bombs. Yousef had shown up in Singapore with Khan earlier in fall 1994. The two got their Philippine visas in Singapore.
   His first operational test of his bomb was inside a mall in Cebu City. The bomb detonated several hours after Yousef put it in a generator room. It caused minor damage, but it proved to Yousef that his bomb was workable.
   He left Manila for several days, but was met by Islamist emissaries upon his return to Metro Manila. They asked him to attack United States President Bill Clinton, who was due to arrive in the Philippines on November 12, 1994 as part of a five-day tour of Asia. Yousef thought of several ways to kill the president, including placing a bomb on Clinton's motorcade route, firing a Stinger missile at Air Force One or the presidential limousine, and killing him with phosgene, a chemical weapon. He abandoned the idea, as it would be too difficult to kill the President. However, he incorporated his plan to kill the Pope into the Bojinka plot.
   In 1994, Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed started testing airport security. Yousef booked a flight between Kai Tak International Airport in Hong Kong and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport near Taipei. Mohammed booked a flight between Ninoy Aquino International Airport near Manila and Kimpo International Airport near Seoul.
   The two had already converted fourteen bottles of contact lens solution into bottles containing nitroglycerin, which was readily available in the Philippines. Yousef had taped to the arch of his foot a metal rod, which would serve as a detonator. The two wore jewelry and clothing with metal to confuse airport security. To support their claim that they were meeting women, they packed condoms in their bags.
   On December 8, Yousef moved into the Doña Josefa Apartments under the alias Najy Awaita Haddad and purported himself to be a Moroccan. Edith Guerrera, the manager, laughed with the receptionist after the two men asked for new registration forms. "Perhaps they've forgotten their names", she said as the first ones were torn up. Yousef had accidentally put his "real name" on the first form. He didn't want to get discovered too early.
   Yousef had booked Room 603 in advance. He had made an Php 80,000 (Philippine Peso) deposit, and added Php 40,000 more up front before taking the elevator to Room 603.
   Mohammed purported himself to be a Saudi or Qatari plywood exporter named Abdul Majid. Yousef and Mohammed had already started planning Operation Bojinka.
   Zyed, probably Ramzi Yousef, was to hit Northwest Flight 30, a United Flight going from Taipei to Honolulu, and a United Flight going from Bangkok to Taipei to San Francisco
   The bombs would have been timed before the operatives stepped off the planes. The aircraft would have blown up over the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea almost simultaneously. If this plan worked, several thousand would have perished, and air travel would have been shut down worldwide for days, if not weeks. The U.S. government estimated the prospective death toll to be about 4,000 if the plot had been executed.

The bomb

The "Mark II" "microbombs" had Casio digital watches as the timers, stabilizers that looked like cotton wool balls, and an undetectable nitroglycerin as the explosive. Other ingredients included glycerin, nitrate, sulfuric acid, and minute concentrations of nitrobenzene, silver azide (silver trinitride), and liquid acetone. Two 9-volt batteries in each bomb were used as a power source. The batteries would be connected to light bulb filaments that would detonate the bomb. Murad and Yousef wired an SCR (silicon controlled rectifier) as the switch to trigger the filaments to detonate the bomb. There was an external socket hidden when the wires were pushed under the watch base as the bomber would wear it. The alteration was so small that the watch could still be worn in a normal manner.
Yousef got batteries past airport security during his December 11 test bombing of Philippine Airlines Flight 434 by hiding them in hollowed-out heels of his shoes. Yousef smuggled the nitroglycerin on board by putting it inside a contact lens solution bottle.

Airports planned to be targeted

Asia

Hong Kong (Kai Tak) International Airport, Hong Kong
New Tokyo International Airport, Narita, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, near Tokyo
Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Pasay City/Parañaque City, National Capital Region, Philippines, near Manila
Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, Taoyuan, Taiwan near Taipei
Singapore Changi Airport, Singapore
Gimpo International Airport, Gimpo, South Korea (Now a part of Seoul)
Bangkok (Don Mueang) International Airport, Bangkok, Thailand

United States

Honolulu International Airport, Honolulu, Hawaii

John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, New York

Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, California

Portland International Airport, Portland, Oregon

San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco, California

Targeted flights

Information still not complete - need OAG of 1995 Police, including 55-year old watch commander Aida D. Fariscal, who decided to investigate the situation, first found four hot plates in their packing crates, what looked like cotton batting soaked in a beige solution, and loops of green, red, blue, and yellow electrical wiring. The telephone rang, and the police ran downstairs thinking that it was a trap. They left the apartment to seek a search warrant. Fariscal had been suspicious of the men in room 603 due to a chain of bombings that happened in the Philippines prior to January 6.
   A 2002 Los Angeles Times article stated that the police deliberately set a fire to rouse the men out of their apartment.
   After police discovered the evidence, they arrested a man who called himself Ahmed Saeed. Saeed said that he was a commercial pilot who was on his way to the precinct house to explain what he claimed to be firecrackers that had gone off. Saeed tried to run away, but he was arrested after he tripped over a tree root. He was hauled to the precinct in a taxi van with the help of two other people. Saeed offered 110,740 Philippine pesos ($2,000 U.S. dollars) to the policemen if they'd agree to let him go, but the officers refused. The first string of text in one of the files states, "All people who support the U.S. government are our targets in our future plans and that's because all those people are responsible for their government's actions and they support the U.S. foreign policy and are satisfied with it. We will hit all U.S. nuclear targets. If the U.S. government keeps supporting Israel, then we'll continue to carry out operations inside and outside the United States to include..." and the text ends.
   A file named "Bojinka" lists the eleven flights between Asia and the United States, which were grouped under five codenames. Strings were found, such as "SETTING: 9:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. TIMER: 23HR. BOJINKA: 20:30-21:30 NRT Date 5" (for United flight 80), and "SETTING: 8:30-9:00. TIMER: 10HR. BOJINKA: 19:30-20:00 NRT Date 4" (for Northwest Flight 30).

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