Author:
Publication: The Australian
Date: October 15, 2001
URL: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,3051530%255E1702,00.html
MILITARY legal officials stopped
a US airstrike on a building where Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar
was hiding, a report has claimed, adding that the move infuriated US Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
A Predator reconnaissance aircraft
identified a convoy of vehicles containing Omar fleeing the Afghan capital
Kabul on the first night of the US-led airstrikes on October 7, said the
report to be published in the New Yorker.
It said the US Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) was controlling the aircraft and did not have the authority
to fire its anti-tank Hellfire missiles, so it requested an air strike
on a building where Omar and some 100 guards had taken cover.
But the report, quoting intelligence
sources, said Central Command (CENTCOM) in Florida vetoed the attack on
legal grounds.
It said CENTCOM commander General
Tommy R. Franks was told the Judge Advocate General (JAG), the military's
legal branch, "doesn't like it".
The article, written by Pulitzer
Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, said the Predator was
told to fire a missile at the vehicles in front of the building to see
who came out.
However the report said after some
vehicles were obliterated nobody emerged.
It said an intelligence operative
on the ground confirmed Omar was in the building and that he escaped a
short time later, just before the building was eventually flattened by
an airstrike.
The report said intelligence officials
were "seething" about the incident and it quoted a senior military officer
as saying it was a result of "political correctness" taking over the system.
The officer described Rumsfeld as
"kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors" after Omar got away.
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke
declined to comment on the report.
Washington accuses Omar's Taliban
regime of giving shelter to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, which has
been blamed for the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
AFP
