Estimating the cost of 9/11 attack, 16 years later

As the world marks 16 years since Al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center in New York City, economists and analysts struggle to estimate the scale of the damage from the attack on the world's financial capital. Michelle Ong gives a rundown in this report.

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Pope Francis denounces radicalization, 'barbarous attacks'

NAIROBI, Kenya - Pope Francis on Thursday denounced radicalization of young people and "barbarous attacks" carried out in the name of religion during the first leg of his three-nation Africa tour.

"His holy name must never be used to justify hatred and violence," Pope Francis said in the Kenyan capital as he met religious leaders of different faiths, citing "barbarous attacks" by Islamic extremists in Nairobi, Garissa and Mandera.

"All too often, young people are being radicalized in the name of religion to sow discord and fear, and to tear at the very fabric of our societies," the pope said nearly two weeks after a group of jihadists, many of them French, killed 130 people in a string of gun and suicide attacks in Paris.

"How important it is that we be seen as prophets of peace, peacemakers who invite others to live in peace, harmony and mutual respect," he said.

Kenya has suffered numerous deadly attacks since sending its army into neighboring Somalia in 2011 after a string of kidnappings it blamed on Al-Qaeda's east Africa branch, the Shebab.

At least 67 people died in an armed assault on Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall in 2013 and 148 were killed in an attack on a university in Garissa in April.

In both attacks, the gunmen made efforts to separate Muslims from non-Muslims before executing the latter.

Although Kenya sees the Shebab threat as primarily external, experts say the country faces internal dangers with marginalized youth easy targets for radicalization and recruitment to extremist groups.

"Our world today is characterized by reckless wars mired in greed, malice, treachery, self-centeredness, blackmail and we are increasingly treated to the very theatre of the most absurd," said Abdulghafur El–Busaidy, chairman of the Supreme Council of Kenyan Muslims.

Anglican leader Eliud Wabukala said Africa was "at a spiritual crossroads" and warned against the threat of "the ideological colonialism of secularist lifestyles".

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Three China execs among dead as president condemns Mali attack

BEIJING - Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday condemned the ''cruel and savage'' attack by Islamist militants on a hotel in Mali's capital that killed 19 people, including three Chinese executives of a state-run railway firm.

Gunmen shouting Islamic slogans attacked the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako on Friday, before Malian commandos stormed the building and freed 170 hostages.

Xi called on "relevant departments" to strengthen security work "outside of China's borders", the Foreign Ministry cited Xi as saying in a statement on its website.

"China will strengthen cooperation with the international community, resolutely crack down on violent terrorist operations that devastate innocent lives and safeguard world peace and security," Xi said.

The three Chinese people killed were executives with China's state-owned China Railway Construction Corp, the company said in a statement on its website.

"China Railway Construction Corp is deeply saddened by the deaths of the three employees, and we express our deep condolences to the families of the victims and strongly condemn the atrocities committed by the terrorists," it said.

Zhou Tianxiang and Wang Xuanshang, general manager and deputy general manager of the company's international division, and Chang Xuehui, general manager of its West Africa division, were killed, the statement said.

The attack on the hotel was claimed by jihadist group Al Mourabitoun and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and is the latest in a series of deadly raids this year in Mali, which has battled Islamist rebels based in its desert north for years.

China vowed this week to bring to justice those responsible for killing one of its citizens after Islamic State said it had killed a Chinese captive.

Beijing has repeatedly denounced Islamist militants and urged the world to step up coordination in combating Islamic State, though it has been reluctant to get involved on the ground in Syria and Iraq where the group largely operates.

Chinese officials say the country faces a severe threat from Islamist separatists in its western Xinjiang region, where violence has left hundreds dead over the past three years.

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Did torture really help US find al Qaeda chief?

WASHINGTON - Hailed as a major success in the U.S. "war on terror," the capture of Indonesian cleric Hambali if often touted by the U.S. intelligence community as evidence that harsh interrogation produces results.

But the U.S. Senate report on CIA interrogation methods released this week suggests that more mundane steps - email monitoring, a tip off from a CIA source and help from Thailand - may have been what brought down Hambali, head of militant group Jemaah Islamiah.

"Frankly, we stumbled onto Hambali," the report quoted the head of the Central Intelligence Agency's counterterrorism center in southeast Asia as saying in 2005.

Conflicting stories about the trail of clues that led investigators to Hambali illustrate one of the main disputes over the U.S. interrogation of terror suspects: Awful as it was, did it actually work?

Senior CIA officials told Congress, the White House and the Justice Department for years that a snippet of information from the brutal interrogation of senior al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed led to Hambali's capture.

Accused of planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Mohammed was repeatedly subjected to some of the CIA's harshest methods after he was captured. He was waterboarded - a technique intended to simulate drowning - 183 times, and was slapped, grabbed and deprived of sleep, according to the Senate report.

Mohammed told CIA interrogators in early 2003 about a plan to have a former resident of Baltimore, Majid Khan, send $50,000 to southeast Asia to fund al Qaeda attacks.

The spy agency says that information helped investigators uncover a network of terror suspects in southeast Asia that led to Hambali himself. Hambali, also known as Riduan Isamuddin, was detained in Ayutthaya, Thailand, in 2003.

Described by former President George W. Bush as "one of the world's most lethal terrorists," Hambali is suspected of having been involved in plotting the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of a nightclub in Bali that killed more than 200 people. He has been held at the Guantanamo U.S. military prison in Cuba without trial since 2006.

TORTURE PLAYED "NO ROLE"

Although the CIA frequently presented the capture of Hambali as evidence that torture did produce valuable intelligence, the Senate report said that the harsh treatment of Mohammed, known as KSM, did not help catch Hambali.

In 2003, Hambali was among Asia's most wanted men. The main go-between for the Jemaah Islamiah group of Southeast Asia and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, Hambali was considered the only man from the region to win a place at al Qaeda's top table.

His capture was seen as a coup for the Bush administration and Southeast Asian governments fearful of Jemaah Islamiah's ability to launch attacks across the region.

The CIA gave "inaccurate representations regarding the capture of Hambali" in 18 documents sent to policymakers and the Department of Justice between 2003 and 2009, said the report, compiled by the Democratic majority on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"A review of CIA operational cables and other records found that information obtained from KSM during and after the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques played no role in the capture of Hambali," the report said.

Before Mohammed gave up information about Khan during interrogation, the CIA was already assembling leads that would eventually bring it and Thai investigators to Hambali, the report said.

Some clues came from monitoring emails between al Qaeda and Khan, who was later captured in Pakistan. He gave Pakistani investigators details about al Qaeda's links to Southeast Asia that eventually pointed to Hambali, the report said.

In contrast to the CIA's use of torture, Pakistani interrogators pried information from Khan with a soft questioning technique known as "rapport building," the report said.

A CIA source contributed to the capture of Hambali by identifying an associate of Khan in Thailand who gave information to Thai authorities that brought them closer to the Indonesian militant, the Senate document said.

After Hambali's capture, Thailand also claimed credit.

"We received tipoffs from local people that there were strange-looking people staying around there so we checked their background and passports and realized that they were the people we were looking for," then Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said in 2003.

Former intelligence officials disputed the Senate committee's assertions that the CIA interrogation program played no role in the hunt for Hambali.

"The report errs in not recognizing that a piece of information can be useful and even critical to reaching an analytic conclusion, even if there also are other pieces of information that were at least as useful," said Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA analyst.

They said the United States never would have tracked down and killed bin Laden in 2011 without information acquired in the interrogation program, although the Senate committee strongly refutes that.

The committee said the CIA misrepresented how it got useful information from a detainee that helped locate bin Laden.

The terror suspect, Hassan Ghul, did tell his captors the name of Bin Laden's courier as the CIA reported but he did so before undergoing torture, not during it, the report said

Hambali, the nom-de-guerre of Indonesian-born Riduan Isamuddin, was believed to be in the process of organizing a follow-up to the Sept. 11 attacks, possibly involving airplanes, but this time directed at the West Coast of the United States, former CIA officials say.

Michael Hayden, the ex-director of the CIA, told Fox News on Wednesday that the agency is still using information gleaned from harsh interrogations, which have since been banned.

"These interrogations of all the detainees gave us kind of a Home Depot-like storage of information on al Qaeda on which we relied, well we are still relying on it today."

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Who shot bin Laden? Former US Navy SEALS make rival claims

WASHINGTON - Members of the U.S. Navy Seal commando team that killed Osama bin Laden at his Pakistan hideout in May, 2011 are making conflicting claims as to who actually shot the al Qaeda leader.

The Washington Post published a story on Thursday quoting Rob O'Neill, a former SEAL, as claiming to have fired the fatal shot that hit bin Laden in the forehead after O'Neill stormed into a room in bin Laden's house in Abbottabad.

The claim by O'Neill, who travels the country giving motivational speeches, was countered by a source close to another SEAL team member.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the team member told him the fatal shot was fired by one of two other men who entered the room before O'Neill.

The Post said O'Neill acknowledged shots were fired at bin Laden by at least two other Seal team members, including Matt Bissonnette, a former Seal who wrote a 2012 book about the raid entitled "No Easy Day."

The book did not identify the person who shot bin Laden.

NBC News quoted Bissonnette on Thursday as saying: "Two different people telling two different stories for two different reasons ... Whatever he (O'Neill) says, he says. I don't want to touch that."

Last year, after Esquire Magazine published an interview with an anonymous SEAL member, now widely reported to have been O'Neill, who claimed to have shot bin Laden, other media outlets questioned the account.

An article entitled "Who really killed bin Laden," by Peter Bergen, a CNN analyst and al Qaeda expert, quoted a then-serving SEAL team member saying the story as presented by Esquire was "complete B.S."

A representative of a speaker's organization which says it represents O'Neill said he was unavailable to comment. O'Neill's page on the website of the organization describes his career as a SEAL, but makes no mention of a role in killing bin Laden.

Bissonnette's lawyer, Robert Luskin, acknowledged Thursday that Bissonnette for some time had been under criminal investigation by both the Naval Criminal Investigation Service and the Justice Department for possible violations of a U.S. espionage law because he did not seek official clearance before publishing his book.

Bissonnette denies wrongdoing.

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Kenya widens mall attack probe, alert for UK 'White Widow'

NAIROBI - Interpol issued a wanted persons alert at Kenya's request on Thursday for a British woman who has been cited by British police as a possible suspect in the attack on a Nairobi shopping mall that killed at least 72 people.

The alert was issued as Kenyan police broadened the investigation into the weekend raid claimed by the al Qaeda-aligned Somali al Shabaab group, the worst such assault since the U.S. Embassy was bombed in the capital by al Qaeda in 1998.

Kenya said that it requested the so-called "red alert" notice for Samantha Lewthwaite, 29, on Wednesday. Interpol has joined agencies from Britain, the United States, Israel and others in the Kenyan investigation of the wrecked mall.

Lewthwaite, the widow of one of the suicide bombers who attacked London's transport system in 2005, is believed to have evaded arrest two years ago in the port city of Mombasa, where she is wanted in a plot to bomb hotels and restaurants.

Interpol's "red alert" cites that 2011 plot.

"The 'red alert' has nothing to do with Westgate. Her role in this attack is yet to be confirmed, but she is wanted on charges of possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony," Ndegwa Muhoro, director of Kenya's Criminal Investigation Department, told Reuters early on Thursday.

Muhoro said she is wanted in a case related to another Briton, Jermaine Grant, whom police suspected of having ties to al Shabaab.

Police say Grant was arrested in a December 2011 raid which Lewthwaite escaped. He is on trial in Mombasa, charged with possession of explosives recovered from their apartment, and conspiracy to commit a felony, which he denies.

"We have no facts linking her to Westgate for now. If in the course of investigations these come up, we shall take action. We issued the alert after discovering evidence this month linking her to Grant and she would be charged with him," Muhoro said.

Police in Mombasa, a tourist hub, said they were also tracking four suspected militants after the siege of the swanky Westgate mall, which militants stormed on Saturday armed with assault rifles and grenades.

The mall attack has demonstrated the reach of al Shabaab beyond Somalia, where Kenyan troops have joined other African forces to drive the group out of major urban areas, although it still controls swathes of the countryside.

Al Shabaab stormed the mall to demand Kenya pull its troops out, which President Uhuru Kenyatta has ruled out.

Many details of the four-day siege are unclear, including the identity of the attackers, who officials said numbered about a dozen. Suspicion of Lewthwaite, dubbed the "White Widow" in the British press, was triggered by witness accounts that one of raiders was a white woman.

FORENSIC WORK

But Kenya's government and Western officials have cautioned that they cannot confirm she was involved, or even that there were any women participants in the raid.

The government said five attackers were killed, along with at least 61 civilians and six security personnel.

Eleven suspects have been arrested, but it is not clear if any took part in the attack.

Although the Red Cross lists 71 missing people, the government said it does not expect a big rise in the death toll.

Part of the Westgate mall collapsed in the siege, burying some bodies and hindering investigations, although forensic experts have started work while soldiers search for explosives. Officials said some blasts on Thursday were controlled ones.

"The army are still in there with the forensic teams," said one senior police officer near the mall.

Mombasa police said they were tracking a network of suspects linked to al Shabaab in the coastal region, home to many of Kenya's Muslims, who make up about 10 percent of the nation's 40 million people. Most Kenyans are Christians.

"We have four suspects within Mombasa who we are closely watching. They came back to the country after training in Somalia," country police commander Robert Kitur told Reuters.

Another counterterrorism officer, who asked not to be identified, also said four suspects were being tracked.

DENTED IMAGE

The mall attack has dented Kenya's image as a relatively safe tourist destination, damaging a vital source of revenues. But rating agency Moody's said that, although the attack was "credit negative," it would not effect foreign direct investment or a planned Kenyan Eurobond later this year.

In 1998, al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people. Since then, Kenya has faced other smaller attacks, many claimed by al Shabaab, particularly along the border region next to Somalia.

On Thursday, al Shabaab claimed responsibility for killing two police officers in an assault on an administrative post in Mandera county next to Somalia. The border has been closed.

Experts say the insecure border has allowed Kenyan sympathisers of al Shabaab to cross into Somalia for training.

"They are coming back because our armed forces destroyed their training ground there," said Kitur.

The coastal region also has been the target of attacks by a separatist movement, the Mombasa Republican Council, although that group has long denied it has connections with al Shabaab.

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