MAHMOUD AHMAD

:''This article is about the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence. For the Ethiopian singer, see Mahmoud Ahmed.''

Lieutenant General 'Mahmoud Ahmad' is a former head of Inter-Services Intelligence, the principal intelligence body of Pakistan. He along with other generals were successful in overthrowing the elected government of Nawaz Sharif, in the 1999 coup d'etat to bring General Pervez Musharraf to power. He was serving as the Corps Commander Rawalpindi at that time. After the coup, General Mahmoud was transferred as the Director General ISI, replacing Lieutenant General Khwaja Ziauddin, who was Sharif's choice to replace General Musharraf as the army chief before the coup.
General Mahmoud was known to visit the United States regularly during his time as the head of ISI consulting senior officials in the U.S. administration in the weeks before and after 9/11. In fact, he was with Republican Congressman Porter Goss and Democratic Senator Bob Graham in Washington, discussing Osama bin Laden over breakfast, when the attacks of September 11, 2001 happened. He was immediately called into meetings with American officials where demands of Pakistani cooperation were made and he was told to convey this to the Pakistani government.
In early October 2001, Indian intelligence alleged that Mahmoud had ordered Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh — the convicted mastermind of the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl — to wire US$100,000 from Dubai to one of 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta's two bank accounts in Florida.
General Mahmoud Ahmad opposed the US invasion of Afghanistan, arguing that the Taliban, for all its faults was still better for Pakistan. He was retired from his role in the ISI on 8 October 2001, just prior to the US invasion of Afghanistan. He was replaced by Lieutenant General Ehsan ul Haq as the Director General ISI.

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Links to Al Qaeda

External links

Links to Al Qaeda

On July 22nd 2004, The Guardian reported that Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist, had, on the instructions of General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to retire by President Musharraf. ^[1]

External links

★ Asia Times: 911 and the Smoking Gun - A Real Smoking Gun

★ BBC NEWS Profile: Omar Saeed Sheikh

★ The Times of India: CIA gets new boss in Porter Goss