Bojinka Plot

The **Bojinka Plot** (Arabic: بوجينكا; Tagalog: *Oplan Bojinka*) refers to a large-scale, three-phase terrorist attack planned by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for January 1995. It consisted of three phases: the assassination of Pope John Paul II, the bombing of 11 airliners in flight from Asia to the United States with the goal of killing about 4,000 US Passengers and shutting down air travel around the world, and crashing an airplane into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Despite careful planning, the Bojinka plot was disrupted after a chemical fire drew the attention of the Philippine National Police – Western Police District (PNP-WPD, now known as Manila Police District PNP-MPD) on January 6–7, 1995. As a result, Yousef and Mohammed were unable to stage any of the three attacks. The only fatality resulted from a test bomb planted by Yousef on Philippine Airlines Flight 434, which killed one person and injured 10 others. They also planted two other bombs in a shopping mall and theater in the southern Philippines. Elements of the Bojinka plot (including the plan to crash a plane into the CIA headquarters) would be later used in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, six years later.

## Background

### Financing

Funding for the Bojinka plot came from Osama bin Laden and Hambali, and from front organizations operated by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law. Wali Khan Amin Shah was the financier of the plot. He funded the plot by laundering money through his girlfriend and other Manila women, several of whom were bar hostesses and one of whom was an employee at a KFC restaurant. They were bribed with gifts and holiday trips so that they would open bank accounts to stash funds.

The transfers were small, equivalent to about 12,000 to 24,000 Philippine pesos ($500 to $1,000 US), and would be handed over each night at a Wendy's or a karaoke bar. The funds went to "Adam Sali", an alias used by Ramzi Yousef. The money came through a Filipino bank account owned by Jordanian Omar Abu Omar, who worked at International Relations and Information Centre, an Islamic organization run by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa.

A company called Konsojaya also provided financial assistance to the Manila cell by laundering money to it. Konsojaya was a front company that was started by the head of the group Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesian named Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali. Wali Khan Amin Shah was on the board of directors of the company.

## Bojinka plot stages

### Stage One: The assassination of Pope John Paul II

The first stage of the conspiracy was to assassinate Pope John Paul II when he visited the Philippines during the World Youth Day 1995 celebrations. On January 15, 1995, a suicide bomber would dress up as a priest, while John Paul II passed in his motorcade on his way to the San Carlos Seminary in Makati. The assassin planned to get close to the Pope and detonate the bomb. The planned assassination of the Pope was intended to divert attention from the next phase of the operation. About 20 men had been trained by Yousef to carry out this act prior to January 1995.

### Stage Two: Airline bombing

The next plan would have involved at least five terrorists, including Yousef, Shah, Murad, and two more unknown operatives. Beginning on January 21, 1995, and ending on January 22, 1995, they would have placed bombs on 11 United States-bound airliners which had stopovers scattered throughout East Asia and Southeast Asia. All of the flights had two legs. The bombs would be planted inside life jackets under seats on the first leg, and each bomber would then disembark. He would then board one or two more flights and repeat. After all of the bombers had planted bombs on all of the flights, each man would then catch flights to Lahore, Pakistan. The men never needed U.S. visas, as they only would have been on the planes for their first legs within Asia.

The terrorists chose US airliners over Asian ones, with the intention of maximizing shock towards Americans. The flights targeted were listed under operatives with codenames: "Zyed", "Majbos", "Markoa", "Mirqas" and "Obaid". Obaid, who was really Abdul Hakim Murad, was to plant a bomb on United Flight 80, then, go back to Singapore on another United flight which he would also bomb.

The explosions were to be timed by the operatives before they disembarked from the plane. The aircraft would have exploded over the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea almost simultaneously. If this plan worked, several thousand passengers would have perished, and air travel would likely have been shut down worldwide. The U.S. government estimated the prospective death toll to be about 4,000 if the plot had been executed. By comparison, about 3,000 were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the old timeline.

### Stage Three: Aeroplane attack against the CIA

According to Abdul Hakim Murad himself during his interrogation by Manila police, Phase Three of the Bojinka plot would have involved Murad either renting, buying, or hijacking a small airplane, preferably a Cessna. The airplane would be filled with explosives. He would then crash it into the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in the Langley area in Fairfax County, Virginia. Murad had been trained as a pilot in North Carolina, and was slated to be a suicide pilot.

There were alternate plans to hijack a 12th commercial airliner and use that instead of the small aircraft, probably due to the Manila cell's growing frustration with explosives.

Testing explosives in a house or apartment is dangerous, and it can easily give away a terrorist plot. Khalid Sheik Mohammed probably made the alternate plan.

In addition to attacking the CIA, the plotters considered hijacking more planes and crashing them into different buildings across the United States, including the World Trade Center in New York City, NY, The Pentagon (Arlington, Virginia), the United States Capitol (Washington, D.C.), the White House (Washington, D.C.), the Sears Tower (Chicago, Illinois), the U.S. Bank Tower (Los Angeles, California), and the Transamerica Pyramid (San Francisco, California). It was this part of the plot that eventually evolved into the 9/11 terrorist attacks six years later.

## Exposure and termination

The plot was exposed thanks to an apartment fire at the six-story Doña Josefa apartments occurred in Manila, Philippines, on the evening of Friday, January 6, 1995, six days before Pope John Paul II was scheduled to visit the Philippines on January 12.

Edith Guerrera, the owner of the apartments, called the fire brigade, but the fire went out unassisted.

Police Major Francisco F. Bautista and his staff, including watch commander Aida D. Fariscal, decided to investigate the situation and saw four hot plates in their packing crates, what looked like cotton batting soaked in a beige solution, and loops of green, red, blue, and yellow electrical wiring. The telephone rang, and the police ran downstairs, thinking that it was a trap.

The widow of a slain police officer, she had spent 17 years as a homemaker before enrolling in the police department in 1977. She became well known in her home nation, which awarded her the equivalent of 33,222 pesos ($700) and a trip to Taiwan. The CIA awarded her a certificate reading "in recognition of your personal outstanding efforts and co-operation." Her decision to investigate the fire was key to disrupting the plot and forcing Yousef to flee.

## Aftermath and legacy

In the old timeline, the U.S. investigators did not find the connection with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to al-Qaeda until several years later. Having decided that explosives were too risky for his next plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed decided to use airplanes. The plot was later revised and attempted as the September 11 attacks, though in the Dark Earth Universe, a series of complications ultimately thwarted that terrorist plot as well.

Years later, around 2024-2025, the thwarted conspiracy caught the attention of an international terrorist organization based in both Russia and Ukraine that decided to recycle the basic idea behind the Bojinka Plot, only to reverse engineer it: instead of using passenger airliners, they got the idea to use stolen military drones and small, single-engine planes. Instead of targeting Americans, they targeted high-ranking Russian politicians and military officers as part of a bid to both forcibly end the Russo-Ukrainian War and overthrow Vladimir Putin in a violent coup.