9/11 ‘wouldn’t have happened’ had US got terror alert ahead of event: Holbrooke

PARIS - US Special Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, has stated that the September 11, 2001 attacks “wouldn’t have happened” had the US been forewarned to be on the lookout for terrorism.

Holbrooke made these remarks while talking about terrorism, and defending a warning to American travellers to be vigilant against the possibility of terrorism in Europe, Express.co.uk reported.

He pointed to “a series of indications” that merited telling Americans to be more watchful, stressing that the US did not ask people to cancel their travel plans, instead it told them to be more alert.

“I think it’s telling the public the truth. Nobody said, ‘Cancel your travel plans’. They just said, ‘Be more alert’, and I like that approach,” he said.

“If somebody had said that before 9/11 it wouldn’t have happened because you would have had more people paying more attention to what was going on,” he added.

France and Britain are among the many European countries that have stepped up terrorism alert vigilance recently. Germany, meanwhile, has said that though it remains watchful, there is no reason to be alarmist.

French authorities have recorded nine bomb alerts in the capital last month- a threefold increase from a year earlier. (ANI)