Al-Qaeda has advanced plans to carry out a mass terror attack in Tel Aviv the year after 9/11, Yediot Achranot reported on Friday.

The plan, which was in its final stages, was discovered and thwarted by US intelligence agents, a former FBI agent revealed.

FBI operative Ali Soufan, a counterterrorism expert who was in charge of monitoring al-Queda before his retirement in 2005, told Yediot how the FBI discovered the al-Quaeda plot to strike Israel. The plot has been placed under a gag order by the CIA and has now been revealed for the first time.

Soufan explained that the plot was discovered while the FBI was interrogating a Palestinian al-Qaeda operative apprehended in Pakistan in 2002. Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, also known as Abu Zubaydah, is an Arab from the Palestinian Authority who had served time in an Israeli prison. He later traveled to Afghanistan, where he joined the mujihadeen and became a close ally of Osama bin Laden.

Soufan told Yediot: “When I began interrogating Abu Zubaydah, the first thing I said to him was: ‘You’re such a professional, so careful. What mistake do you think you made that enabled us to capture you?

“Abu Zubaydah thought for a moment and responded, ‘The answer is obvious…the Israelis got hold of our contacts for our upcoming operation.'”

“That’s how he revealed to us something that we had no idea about – that they were planning a multi-site terror attack in Israel, in several nightclubs, which according to their estimation, would kill about 200 people at once,” Soufan said.

An al-Queda commander was coordinating the operation from Europe and was slated to travel to Israel to lead the perpetration of the multi-site attack. The CIA immediately notified Israeli and European intelligence organizations and the commander was arrested.

“Luckily we managed to stop them at the last moment,” Soufan said.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)