Al Jazeera interview with former Afghan President Hamid Karzai (10 September 2015): "On the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Afghan President Hamid Karzai joins Mehdi Hasan in UpFront's Headliner segment. In this online preview, Karzai dismisses al-Qaeda's presence in the country, calling it a "myth".
“[Al-Qaeda] is for me a myth […] For us, they don’t exist.”
“I don't know if al-Qaeda existed and I don't know if they exist," said Karzai. "I have not seen them and I've not had any report about them, any report that would indicate that al-Qaeda is operating in Afghanistan."
Asked whether he believed Osama bin Laden carried out the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington DC and plotted them from Afghanistan, he responded: "That is what I have heard from our Western friends. That's what the Western media says. There is no doubt that an operation, a terrorist operation was conducted in New York and in Washington."
Asked again by Hasan if he believed the 9/11 attacks were the responsibility of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the former president responded: "I neither believe nor disbelieve something that I don't know about. I can tell you that Afghanistan was as much a victim of terrorism as was America, as were the people who were killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks" (see “Preview: Hamid Karzai says al-Qaeda is a “myth’”, Al Jazeera, 10 September 2015: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/upfront/2015/09/preview-hamid-karzai-al-qaeda-myth-150910101842572.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=*AfPak%20Daily%20Brief ).