The Bojinka plot ( ; ) was a failed large-scale, three-phase terrorist attack planned by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for January 1995. They intended to assassinate Pope John Paul II; blow up 11 airliners in flight from Asia to the United States, with the goal of killing approximately 4,000 passengers and shutting down air travel around the world; and crash a plane into the headquarters of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia.
Despite careful planning, the Bojinka plot was disrupted after a chemical fire drew the attention of the Philippine National Police on January 6–7, 1995. 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 used in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, six years later.
Terminology and etymology The plot is also known as Oplan Bojinka, Operation Bojinka, Project Bojinka, and Bojinga. FBI officials described Operation Bojinka as an intended "48 hours of terror."
Several news media outlets, including Time Asia, incorrectly stated that the word Bojinka means "loud bang" or "explosion" in the Croatian language. The 9/11 Commission Report states that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said "bojinka is not Croatian for 'big bang', as has been widely reported, but rather a nonsense word he adopted after hearing it on the front lines in Afghanistan."
Financing Funding for the Bojinka plot came from Osama bin Laden, Hambali, and 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 Syrian-born Omar Abu Omar, who worked at the 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. Shah was on the board of directors of the company.
Planning
As soon as Ramzi Yousef arrived in Manila, along with other "Arab Afghans" who were creating cells in Manila, he began work making bombs. Yousef had shown up in Singapore with Shah earlier in the autumn of 1994. The two got their Philippine visas in Singapore.
In 1994, Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed started testing airport security. Yousef booked a flight between Kai Tak International Airport in Hong Kong and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport near Taipei. Mohammed booked a flight between Ninoy Aquino International Airport near Manila and Kimpo International Airport near Seoul. The two had already converted 14 bottles of contact lens solution into bottles containing nitroglycerin, which was readily available in the Philippines. Yousef had taped a metal rod to the arch of his foot, which would serve as a detonator. The two wore jewelry and clothing with metal to confuse airport security. To support their claim that they were meeting women, they packed condoms in their bags.
On December 8, Yousef moved into the Doña Josefa Apartments (later known simply as the Josefa Apartments and eventually converted to a hotel in 2019 under the name "Mannra Hotel") in the Malate district under the alias "Najy Awaita Haddad," using a fake Moroccan identity. He booked Unit 603 in advance with a ₱80,000 deposit and an additional ₱40,000. Mohammed claimed to be a Saudi or Qatari plywood exporter named "Abdul Majid." Upon settling in the unit, both men had already started planning Operation Bojinka.
Edith Guerrera, the manager, jokingly claimed with the receptionist after the two men asked for new registration forms, that "they have forgotten their names," adding that the first ones were torn up, but nevertheless gave in to their requests. Unknown to them, Yousef had accidentally put his actual name on the first form.
The apartment was chosen because of its location; it was away from the Apostolic Nunciature, the Holy See's diplomatic mission in the Philippines, and down the street from Manila Police Station No. 9 on Quirino Avenue. One of the windows of the unit looks down on the path that the papal motorcade was to take. A conspirator named Abdul Hakim Murad went to Manila with Yousef and stayed at the same apartment.
People were suspicious of the men in Unit 603, who were described as being very secretive. According to Guerrera, the men gave the impression that they were in the Philippines to study, adding that "they looked like students." She also revealed that they double-locked the door when they were inside or out and never asked for a cleaning crew to clear up the room, also adding that they "had chemical burns on their hands," carried boxes, and never hired other people to help them. Also unknown to them, the boxes contained chemicals bought from suppliers in Manila and Quezon City in Metro Manila, which Yousef used to make his bombs.
According to Abdul Hakim Murad, he gave Yousef an idea for crashing a plane into the CIA's headquarters; Yousef took this suggestion but did not draft plots for it at the moment, before heading off with Mohammed to Puerto Galera for scuba diving.
Test bombs: mall, theater, 747 airliner
Yousef's first operational test of his bomb was inside a mall in Cebu City. The bomb detonated several hours after he put it in a generator room. It caused minor damage, but it proved to Yousef that his bomb was workable. On December 1, 1994, Yousef placed a bomb under a seat in the Greenbelt Theatre in Makati City near Manila to test what would happen if a bomb exploded under an airline seat. The bomb went off, injuring several patrons.
Following this incident, Yousef booked the Manila-Cebu leg of the Narita-bound Philippine Airlines Flight 434 under the alias Armaldo Forlani, using a forged Italian passport. During this leg, he built another bomb, which had one-tenth of the power that his final bombs were planned to have, in the lavatory of the aircraft, setting the timer for four hours. Yousef planted the bomb inside the life jacket pouch of seat 26K, which he moved into after takeoff, and disembarked in Cebu.
The bomb exploded while the aircraft was over Japan's Minamidaitō Island, part of Okinawa Prefecture, killing Haruki Ikegami, a Japanese citizen occupying the seat; an additional 10 passengers were injured. The flight was carrying 273 passengers. The blast blew a hole in the floor, and the cabin's rapid expansion severed several control cables in the ceiling, cutting off control of the plane's right aileron, as well as both the captain's and first officer's steering controls. Usually, 26K, the seat that Yousef chose to plant the bomb, would be positioned directly over the centre fuel tank, and the detonation of the bomb would have caused a crippling explosion, but on this particular airframe, a former Scandinavian Airlines aircraft, the seat was two rows forward from normal. The flight crew kept control of the Boeing 747-200 and brought it into an emergency landing at Okinawa's Naha Airport. Satisfied with the deadly results of the attack, Yousef then planned which flights to attack for "Phase II" of the plot.
Phase I: Pope assassination plot The first plan was to assassinate Pope John Paul II when he visited the Philippines during the World Youth Day celebrations in January 1995. On January 15 of that year, 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.
The details of Phase I were found in the evidence discovered in the investigation into Unit 603 in the Doña Josefa.
Phase II: Airline bombing plot 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 that had stopovers scattered throughout East Asia and Southeast Asia. U.S. airlines were chosen instead of Asian airlines to maximize the shock to Americans. The flights targeted were listed under operatives with codenames: "Zyed", "Majbos", "Markoa", "Mirqas", and "Obaid".
Each of the intended flights had two legs; the bombs would be planted inside life jackets under seats on the first leg, and each bomber would then disembark. Each conspirator would plant bombs on at least two flights in this way, then catch a flight to Pakistan. They would set timers for the bombs to explode over the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea almost simultaneously, intending to immediately shut down air travel worldwide. The U.S. government estimated the prospective death toll to be about 4,000 if the plot had been executed, as compared to almost 3,000 killed during the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Bombs The "Mark II microbombs" would have Casio digital watches as the timers, stabilizers that looked like cotton balls, and an undetectable quantity of nitroglycerin as the explosive. Other ingredients included glycerin, nitric and sulfuric acid, and minute concentrations of nitrobenzene, silver azide (silver trinitride), and liquid acetone. Two 9-volt batteries in each bomb were used as a power source, connected to light bulb filaments that would detonate the bomb. Murad and Yousef wired a silicon controlled rectifier as the switch to trigger the filaments to detonate the bomb. There was an external socket hidden when the wires were pushed under the watch base as the bomber would wear it. The alteration was so small that the watch could still be worn in a normal manner.
Yousef got batteries past airport security during his December 11 test bombing of Philippine Airlines Flight 434 by hiding them in hollowed-out heels of his shoes. Yousef smuggled the nitroglycerin on board by putting it inside a small container, supposedly containing contact lens cleaning solution.
Airports planned to be targeted
Asia Kai Tak Airport in British Hong Kong Narita International Airport in Tokyo, Japan Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, Philippines Chiang Kai-shek (Taoyuan) International Airport in Taipei, Taiwan Singapore Changi Airport in Singapore Gimpo International Airport in Seoul, South Korea Bangkok (Don Mueang) International Airport in Bangkok, Thailand
United States Honolulu International Airport, Honolulu, Hawaii John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles Chicago O'Hare International Airport, Chicago San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco
Targeted flights "Zyed" was to plant bombs on a Northwest Airlines Manila–Seoul–Los Angeles flight, a United Airlines Seoul–Taipei–Honolulu flight, and a United Bangkok–Taipei–San Francisco flight.