USA Today -- "Al-Jazeera: Taliban offered to give up bin Laden before 9/11"

[Prometheus Bound]

Sep 11, 2011
Al-Jazeera: Taliban offered to give up bin Laden before 9/11

The Taliban government in Afghanistan offered to present Osama bin Laden for a trial long before the 9/11 attacks, but the U.S. government showed no interest, Al-Jazeera TV reports, quoting a senior aide to Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Update at 11:25 a.m. ET: Al-Jazeera says Robert Grenier, the CIA station chief in Pakistan at the time of 9/11, confirms that such proposals were made to U.S. officials.

It quotes Grenier as saying Washington considered the offers a "ploy." "Another idea was that would be brought to trial before a group of Ulema in Afghanistan," Grenier is quoted as saying. "No one in the U.S. government took these seriously because they did not trust the Taliban and their ability to conduct a proper trial."
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/09/al-jazeera-report-taliban-offered-to-give-up-bin-laden-for-trial-before-911/1

[Cary Vonfused]

1. The Taliban wasn't planning on holding a trial

They said they would turn Osama over to a third party for a trial, if the US presented evidence that Bin Laden was guilty. Chimpco didn't even try to make the deal.

[bvar22]

14. That was AFTER 9-11.

According to this article, the Taliban was willing to turn over Bin Laden BEFORE 9-11 for other attacks against the US.
The article does NOT give any dates for these offers.

[EFerrari]

2. You what's funny about this?

AJE put out a timeline on Friday and they had Bush's demand for bin Laden on it but not the Taliban's offer to turn him over to a third party. (So, I tweeted over correction and the link.) But it's also funny that USAToday is using AJE as the source of the information when it's been out for years and they weren't the original source. :


ETA, twitter exchange with AJE
»
Al Jazeera English
AJEnglish Al Jazeera English
Bush Demanded Bin Laden's handover on Sept. 20, 2001. It didn't happen. aje.me/n7vUsm #AJE911 #AfghanWar
7 Sep Favorite Retweet Reply
in reply to ↑

Elizabeth Ferrari
@48thave Elizabeth Ferrari
@AJEnglish Timeline omits Taliban's offer to turn OBL over to a 3rd party (Oct 14) Bush refuses. bit.ly/15rLja #AfghanWar
7 Sep via web

[LooseWilly]

3. Ironic the US "did not trust the Taliban and their ability to conduct a proper trial"... Gitmo?

The idea that the US can judge what constitutes a "proper trial" at this point is laughable...

[EFerrari]

4. It's twisted. You know about the Cuban 5, right?

There were people in Miami running terrorist attacks on Cuba. Bombing runs and stuff. We wouldn't even try to interdict them. So the Cubans send these five guys over here to gather information. They do, they present it to the FBI and -- they get arrested. That's what that case is about. These guys weren't spying on US, they were trying to prevent another attack on Havana.

[malaise]

11. But but but

the attacks on Cuba were supported by 'US interests'.

[Fumesucker]

5. This is news?

As in new information?

:shrug:

[Prometheus Bound]

9. No, not news at all. I posted it because of the mainstream report. To me that's news.

I didn't remember reading this in mainstream American papers before, and whenever I mentioned it as fact to my Republican acquaintances they would go ballistic, calling me a liar, bullshitter, Taliban lover, and so forth.

[EFerrari]

10. I added a link to a 10/2001 Guardian article in #2, fyi.

This is one of those facts that gets disappeared over and over. We need a name for them like the "gaslit facts" or something. Usually I notice this happening with torture stories but this is the same effect.

[Prometheus Bound]

12. Yes, that's the one I was looking for.

That must be one of the very few mainstream newspapers that reported it.

Good point that Al Jazeera wasn't the original source.

Thanks E.

[EFerrari]

13. Wait, I got this wrong. AJ is talking about before 9/11, not after.

That isn't news either but I got the sequence wrong last night.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

6. If you can't trust the Taliban, who can you trust?

:*

[me b zola]

7. Yeah, it was a "ploy" to arrest the son of a bush* family's oil buddies

Funny how they never seem to want arrest one of their own.

[EFerrari]

8. Btw, AJE STILL doesn't have it in their Afghan war timeline:

http://aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/the911decade/2011/08/2011821143420690956.html?utm_content=automateplus&utm_campaign=Trial5&utm_source=SocialFlow&utm_medium=MasterAccount&utm_term=tweets