In a scathing attack on Pakistan, India said the “architects” of the 9/11 attacks were not hiding in “caves or badlands” but had long evaded detection, arguing that the same “permissive environment” continues to support terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Speaking at a meeting of the UN Security Council, India’s permanent representative Harish Parvathaneni referred to the history of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He said al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were ultimately found in settled communities rather than in remote hideouts.
“The international community has supported the global campaign against terrorism since 9/11. Let us not forget, however, that the al-Qaeda terrorist ecosystem has established its strategic depth beyond Afghanistan through its affiliates,” Parvathaneni said on Wednesday.
Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in Afghanistan, Parvathaneni listed the names of al-Qaeda leaders who planned and carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks and were captured in Pakistani cities.
“The al-Qaeda leaders who conceived and directed these 9/11 attacks did not escape justice in the wilderness of some uncontrolled border,” Parvathaneni said.
The Indian envoy said bin Laden, who ordered and financed the 9/11 plot, was “tracked down and killed in a fortified compound within a populated, gated community as part of Operation Neptune Spear.” Mohammed, “the main organizer of the operation, was found hiding in an ordinary residential building. Ramzi Binalshibh, who coordinated the hijacking group after he was denied a visa to join them, was hiding in the city center,” he said.
Separately, senior al-Qaeda operative Waleed bin Attash, who helped select and train several of the hijackers, was captured. Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a key financial and logistical organizer of the 9/11 operation, was captured under similar circumstances, he said. “In each case, these were not fugitives hiding in caves or badlands, these were people who had evaded detection for a long time. It is important to drain this swamp, which has created a conducive environment for such monsters of humanity to flourish,” Parvathaneni said, making a thinly veiled reference to Pakistan.
He said that “the same permissive environment that harbored the architects of 9/11 continued in subsequent years to provide space, support and impunity for Al Qaeda affiliates such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed and the like, taking on different identities to escape the confines of that Council’s sanctions, and whose leadership and terrorist training infrastructure were shielded from consequences.”
“The international community must come together to ensure the continuity of such asylum to ensure that no more such people are imposed on any country or its citizens and no one loses family and loved ones,” he said.
Last week, as the world marked the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda, members of the UN Security Council, including Pakistan, visited the 9/11 memorial in Lower Manhattan.
Bin Laden was captured and killed in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad in 2011, Mohammed was captured in March 2003 in Rawalpindi and is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay.
Binalshibh and bin Attash were captured in Karachi within a few months, and al-Hawsawi was captured in Pakistan in March 2003.
“Last week we paid tribute to those who were mercilessly destroyed by terrorism 25 years ago in this very city. Earlier this month, members of the Council visited the site of this terrible tragedy. May the memory of these victims always remain a motivation to not only fight all such people who are the worst of humanity, but also those who aid, abet, finance and support their crimes,” Parvathaneni said.
US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz took his fellow Security Council ambassadors to the 9/11 memorial.
“We have strengthened our shared commitment to peace, security and a world free of terror,” Waltz said.
Pakistan currently sits on the Security Council as a non-permanent member, and its envoy Asim Iftikhar Ahmad was among the UN ambassadors who visited the 9/11 memorial.
On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the UN Security Council also adopted a presidential statement reaffirming the Council’s “unequivocal condemnation” of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The PRST, adopted under the French Presidency, was the first Presidency Statement of the Counter-Terrorism Council in five years.
India also reiterated its deep concern about the dire humanitarian situation of Afghan returnees.
The Secretary General’s report on Afghanistan mentions that in 2025, 2.9 million Afghans were returned, and until August 22, 2026, another 1.15 million Afghans were returned, most of them involuntarily.
“The forced return of more than three million people of this nature, which is neither safe nor dignified, in any other part of the world would provoke political outcry in this Council, the urgent provision of large-scale humanitarian support and efforts to ensure better reintegration and assimilation. The lack of such a response is a sad reflection of the times,” Parvathaneni said.
India reiterated that return must be voluntary, safe and dignified, and reintegration must receive sustained international support. To this end, India is collaborating with UN agencies and Afghan authorities to provide shelter, food and other essentials to alleviate the enormous pain and hardship suffered by the returnees.
India said it also strongly condemns the “trade and transit terror inflicted” on Afghanistan in violation of UN declarations on landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), WTO norms, the provisions of the UN Charter and international law, and the principles of basic human compassion.
Published September 17, 2026
