Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me

Louise Adaggo. On the 9th of September 2001 the Afghan resistance leader

Ahmed Shah Masoud who led the opposition to Taliban rule in the late 1990s,

was killed by a suicide bomber. Two days later, Al-Qaeda carried out its attack against America.

In 2011, I spoke to a friend of Ahmed Shamassut who was with him the day he died. London, the 11th of September 2001, just a few hours before a plane will fly into the

north tower of the World Trade Center in New York.

It's 24 minutes past 8 now there is confusion about the fate of the main opposition leader in Afghanistan.

Ahmed Shah Masoud is reported by some sources to have been killed by a suicide bomber at the weekend.

Our Afghan correspondent Cape Clark is on the line.

Ahmed Shah Masoud had died in that suicide attack

thousands of miles away from New York

in a remote corner of Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda, who later that day would attack the Twin Towers, had also killed him.

Masood's people, the Northern Alliance, later confirmed that he'd gone.

Unfortunately, I'm at Shah Masood, Vice President and Ministry of Defense of Islamic State of Afghanistan passed away. We lost our leader and we lost our

father and our brother. Personally I miss him even now when I talk about. As a friend I loved him so much and still I miss him.

...