Bojinka Plot
| Bojinka plot | |
|---|---|
| Location |
Makati, Philippines (Phase I) Airspace (Phase II) Langley, Virginia, U.S. (Phase III) |
| Date | Planned to be executed 15–22 January 1995; foiled on 6–7 January 1995 |
| Target |
Pope John Paul II (Phase I) American airliners (Phase II) CIA Headquarters (Phase III) |
|
Attack type
|
Suicide attack, bombing, aircraft hijacking |
| Deaths | 0 |
|
Non-fatal injuries
|
0 |
| Perpetrators | Al-Qaeda |
The Bojinka plot (Arabic: بجنكة; Tagalog: Oplan Bojinka) was a large-scale, three-phase attack planned by Islamists Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for January 1995. They planned 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 shut down air travel around the world, and crash a plane into the headquarters of the CIA in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Despite careful planning, the Bojinka plot was disrupted after a chemical fire drew the Philippine National Police's (PNP) attention 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 Filipino shopping mall and theater.
The plot is also known as Oplan Bojinka, Operation Bojinka, Project Bojinka, and Bojinga. FBI officials described Operation Bojinka as "48 hours of terror". Several news media outlets, including Time Asia, incorrectly stated that the word Bojinka means "loud bang" or "explosion" in the Serbo-Croatian language.Bojinka is similar to the Russian word "боженька" (bozhinka, sometimes transcribed as "божинька"), which is the diminutive form of the Russian word God, "бог".
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.
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