Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
ABC
October 21, 2008
World News With Charles Gibson (ABC), 6:30 PM
CHARLES GIBSON: We are going to take “A Closer Look” tonight at a face of hate: a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. The number of suicide attacks in that country has doubled in the last year, killing more than 1,000 Afghans. Ninety percent of the bombers come from Pakistan and rarely is a bomber captured before he or she can blow themselves up. More rare is the opportunity to talk with one of the bombers as our Jim Sciutto did.
JIM SCIUTTO: This is a face of a suicide bomber – Ahmad Khan, a 30-year-old Pakistani, was captured outside a U.S. military base this summer moments before he intended to strike. He was wearing this suicide vest packed with several pounds of plastic explosives.
Who did you hope to kill?
AHMAD KHAN [PRISONER]: Americans.
SCIUTTO: We met him inside Kabul’s highest security prison. This is where Afghanistan keeps some of its most dangerous terrorists. There are 300 prisoners here: failed suicide bombers, kidnappers, members of broken terror cells.
SCIUTTO: Khan said his path to martyrdom started at a madrassa or religious school.
“I was poor and unemployed,” he said. “A mullah encouraged me to go to Afghanistan to fight the foreign invaders in a Muslim land.”
SCIUTTO: Over five nights at the madrassa he received both his religious indoctrination and his training in explosives. Then he simply took a bus to the Afghan border.
“Five Pakistani soldiers were in the same bus,” he said. “But no one challenged me. I crossed the border without any questions.”
Once inside Afghanistan, he was told to go to a safe house to meet a Taliban contact, who gave him a suicide vest and his target – a U.S. base in the town of Khost.
Was he looking at that as a way to find paradise?
“This was a way to escape,” he answered. “The mullah told me forget about a job. You can’t read, you can’t write. You should be a martyr and enjoy the afterlife.”
SCIUTTO: Ahmad claims that on the day of the attack, the Taliban injected him with drugs to put him in a daze.
I find it hard to believe it was all the drugs that made you do this because you volunteered in the first place.
“I swear I’m telling the truth,” he said.
Now, Ahmad awaits his death sentence by firing squad.
What do you feel now sitting across from me? I’m an American. Your intention was to kill Americans.
“I found you were good people,” he said.
As we left, we were struck by something else he said: that there were many others like him – more Pakistanis ready to kill and die here.
Jim Sciutto, ABC News, Kabul.
GIBSON: Our “Closer Look” for tonight.
October 21, 2008
World News With Charles Gibson (ABC), 6:30 PM
CHARLES GIBSON: We are going to take “A Closer Look” tonight at a face of hate: a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. The number of suicide attacks in that country has doubled in the last year, killing more than 1,000 Afghans. Ninety percent of the bombers come from Pakistan and rarely is a bomber captured before he or she can blow themselves up. More rare is the opportunity to talk with one of the bombers as our Jim Sciutto did.
JIM SCIUTTO: This is a face of a suicide bomber – Ahmad Khan, a 30-year-old Pakistani, was captured outside a U.S. military base this summer moments before he intended to strike. He was wearing this suicide vest packed with several pounds of plastic explosives.
Who did you hope to kill?
AHMAD KHAN [PRISONER]: Americans.
SCIUTTO: We met him inside Kabul’s highest security prison. This is where Afghanistan keeps some of its most dangerous terrorists. There are 300 prisoners here: failed suicide bombers, kidnappers, members of broken terror cells.
SCIUTTO: Khan said his path to martyrdom started at a madrassa or religious school.
“I was poor and unemployed,” he said. “A mullah encouraged me to go to Afghanistan to fight the foreign invaders in a Muslim land.”
SCIUTTO: Over five nights at the madrassa he received both his religious indoctrination and his training in explosives. Then he simply took a bus to the Afghan border.
“Five Pakistani soldiers were in the same bus,” he said. “But no one challenged me. I crossed the border without any questions.”
Once inside Afghanistan, he was told to go to a safe house to meet a Taliban contact, who gave him a suicide vest and his target – a U.S. base in the town of Khost.
Was he looking at that as a way to find paradise?
“This was a way to escape,” he answered. “The mullah told me forget about a job. You can’t read, you can’t write. You should be a martyr and enjoy the afterlife.”
SCIUTTO: Ahmad claims that on the day of the attack, the Taliban injected him with drugs to put him in a daze.
I find it hard to believe it was all the drugs that made you do this because you volunteered in the first place.
“I swear I’m telling the truth,” he said.
Now, Ahmad awaits his death sentence by firing squad.
What do you feel now sitting across from me? I’m an American. Your intention was to kill Americans.
“I found you were good people,” he said.
As we left, we were struck by something else he said: that there were many others like him – more Pakistanis ready to kill and die here.
Jim Sciutto, ABC News, Kabul.
GIBSON: Our “Closer Look” for tonight.