Los Angeles International Airport enters the narrative as the intended target of the Millennium Plot, not as the scene of an attack. The alleged plan connected the airport to the investigation that first brought Mohamedou Ould Slahi under suspicion, even though authorities later released him after concluding there was no basis to believe he had participated.

The airport as a proposed target

The account identifies the Millennium Plot as a plan to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Day. Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian immigrant and al-Qaeda member based in Montreal, was arrested while entering the United States in a car carrying explosives. The airport’s place in the story is therefore as the proposed destination of a bombing, rather than as a location where the narrative records an attack taking place.

Connection to Slahi’s questioning

Ressam’s arrest prompted a major investigation of Montreal’s Muslim immigrant community and the al Sunnah mosque community in particular. Slahi had moved to Montreal in November 1999, and Canadian police questioned him about possible terrorist connections. When he returned to Mauritania in January 2000, he was detained and questioned by American FBI agents in connection with the plot. After further questioning by Mauritanian authorities, he was released on February 19, 2000; the stated conclusion was that there was no basis to believe he was involved.

A recurring investigative focus

The airport’s narrative significance comes from the way the Millennium Plot remained the focus of questioning beyond Slahi’s first detention. He was questioned again by FBI agents after his detention in Mauritania in September 2001, and the account states that the inquiry continued to center on the plot when he was later held in Jordan. The proposed bombing thus became an early and recurring frame for suspicion, despite Slahi’s release and the absence, in the evidence presented here, of an established connection between him and the planned attack.