'9/11 conspiracy theories are conspiracy fact'

A cover up of a financial scandal or a plot to justify invasion of an oil-rich region? Researchers who have poured through the details of the Sept 11, 2001 tragedy claim it could be both.

Backing their claims with a decade worth of research at the Perdana Global Peace Foundation conference on the matter in Kuala Lumpur today, they agree that while the theories over why it happened may vary, evidence suggest the incident was orchestrated.

For freelance journalist James Corbett, the attacks were an elaborate plot to distract the public from what was making headlines just before - US$2.3 trillion of unaccounted Pentagon funds.

"After Sept 11, this was forgotten," he claimed, suggesting that the hijacked America Airlines jet had crashed into a section of the Pentagon that had minimal staff but "key documents" pertaining to the unaccounted funds.

Offering a scientific explanation using principles of physics and chemistry was architect of 23 years Richard Gage, who founded Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Gage and his colleagues compared videos of the collapse of the World Trade Centre towers to controlled demolitions, and along with eye-witness testimony, concluded that there were detonators placed in the building.

Molten iron not achieved by office fire alone

He also argued that videos showed molted iron streaming down the side of the towers, and that could not have been achieved at the heat generated by an office fire, even if aided with jet fuel.

He said that steel melts at three times the heat, and that the only way to do so is to add chemicals to raise the temperature, like thermite, which he claimed researchers found on the debris.

He also said the findings have been published in academic journals and verified by Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), and this has not been contested.

It is widely accepted that the World Trade Centre towers collapsed as the fire from the airplane crashes had caused its steel structures to melt.

Separately, answering a question from the floor, Mumbai University professor Niloufer Bhagwat claims that the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks "to launder drug money".

She also argued that the US had no proof that the attacks were at all linked to Afghanistan when they launched the attack.

"They went into Afghanistan to take control of the drug trade and to launder this money through Western institutions," she claimed.

The 9/11 attacks launched the global war on terror, which saw wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US maintains the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by militant group al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US Marines last year.

On Sept 11, 2012, the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed at the American embassy in Benghazi, prompting a fresh round of conspiracy theories.

In his keynote address earlier, Perdana Global Peace Foundation president and former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad opined that Arabs are incapable of such an elaborate attack as 9/11, unlike US and Israeli operatives.