http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/70259.htm
AL QAEDA'S VIDEOTAPED SCHEME TO MASSACRE SCHOOLKIDS
By AL GUART
March 9, 2003 -- EXCLUSIVE
HEAVILY armed al Qaeda thugs practiced storming a school, shooting children and taking hostages in a videotaped training exercise, The Post has learned.
The terror rehearsal took place under the mandate of al Qaeda's operations chief, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan March 1, is being interrogated by U.S. authorities at a secret location as the United States tries to learn of other attacks he may have been plotting.
The taped training attack was conducted at an abandoned school in Mir Bach Kot, Afghanistan, north of Kabul, a hotbed of al Qaeda activity before coalition forces overthrew the Taliban regime in 2001. The video shows bullet-ridden blackboards and cut-out targets in classrooms, apparently representing students and teachers, said former Green Beret Keith "Jack" Idema.
Idema found the tapes in an abandoned house while he was in Afghanistan in November 2001 as an adviser to anti-Taliban force, the Northern Alliance.
"Knowing al Qaeda trained to take out a presidential motorcade or an office building is scary, but nothing is more frightening than their training to take over a school," said Idema. "In a classroom in a camp near Jalalabad, we found little desks with bullet holes in them and the backs of the chairs each had seven or eight bullet holes in them. They were definitely aiming to hit critical mass."
Idema, whose travels in post-9/11 Afghanistan are part of a new Random House book, "The Hunt for bin Laden," said he gave copies of the tapes to the military and CIA within weeks of their discovery. Last week, government officials told The Post they believed the tapes were authentic.
But FBI spokesman John Iannarelli said no credible evidence of a specific threat to American schools has surfaced to date.
Segments of the videotapes viewed by The Post featured a hostage-taking exercise and three scenarios where masked men, armed with AK-47s, pistols and hand grenades, storm a school-like brick building. In one attack, which takes just eight minutes to execute, two gunmen rappel from the roof onto a window ledge of the building and wait for the go-ahead on a two-way radio.
"Two of the kidnappers are sitting in the cafeteria," a narrator says in Arabic.
At the command "move!" a janitor sweeping a hallway inside drops his broom and pulls out a gun. Others burst into rooms, fire automatic weapons and bark English commands at a group of children and adults, apparently locals and other camp residents co-opted for the exercise.
"Sit," a hooded terrorist yells to the children, who shriek in horror. "Don't move, don't move," he says. The children are made to kneel and place their hands on the walls while adults stand with hands raised and are frisked.
The armed thugs then herd their captives down the hallways as they shout in English, "Go in here!" and "Don't move!" Some hostages are then ordered to the roof.
"I don't want to go," one sham victim pleads in Arabic.
"Go before I kill you," a rifle-toting thug barks back.
The camera then zooms in on a terrorist, who stomps on a child.
On the rooftop, a lookout announces the arrival of police. A terrorist then drags a "hostage" to the ledge for display.
Other training exercises shown on the tapes include an attack at a mock golf outing where the "caddies" drop their bags, pull out guns and shoot at a dais. The narrator announces in Arabic, "This is how we will kill the world leaders."
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