Pence's linkage of Soleimani to 9/11 hijackers challenged

Washington DC: An assertion by US Vice President Mike Pence that Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, who died Friday in an American attack in Iraq, had helped the September 11 terrorists has been sharply challenged in the US press.

In a Twitter message Friday, Pence said that Soleimani "assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States."

When critics on Twitter noted that the 2001 terror attacks were carried out by 19 militants, and not 12, Pence spokeswoman Katie Waldman specified that Pence was referring only to the dozen who had "transited through Afghanistan." She then added that "10 of those 12 were assisted by Soleimani." But as the New York Times pointed out, Soleimani -- who at the time was already heading the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corp -- is never named in the detailed 585-page report issued by the September 11 Commission.