MEMORIAL services are being held across America today to mark the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives in 2001. Al-Qaeda, an Islamist terrorist group, was responsible for the attacks, though not everyone agrees. In a recent poll of 16,000 people in 17 countries, only in nine did a majority of respondents say al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, its leader, were behind the attacks. Overall some 46% said the group was to blame, with Kenyans and Nigerians most convinced. Alarmingly, 23% of Germans subscribe to the conspiracy theory that the American government plotted the attack. In the Middle East, many point to Israel.

AFP