Doubts emerge over identities of hijackers in US attacks
AFP
Washington , September 20, 20:57
US officials are investigating whether some or all of
the 19 hijackers on the four hijacked aircraft used
in last week's terror attacks used stolen identities,
possibly complicating efforts to link them to Osama
bin Laden. The doubts started to emerge when at least
four men with names matching those on an FBI list of
the hijackers turned up alive in Saudi Arabia and
Tunisia.
An unnamed senior US
official told Thursday's
Washington Post that there
was now uncertainty over
the list of names. "There may be some question with
regard to the identity of at least some of them," he said.
The Chicago Tribune spoke to an unnamed justice
department official who said "the names on the list are
the best information that we have, (but) we are
investigating the possibility of identity theft and false
identification." The doubts grew when FBI agents
fanning out across the country and around the world
looking for accomplices of the hijackers arrested three
suspects of Arab origins in Detroit on Tuesday, but
were unable to immediately say from which country
they came. The three were charged with possession of
false documents.
Another four people have been arrested as material
suspects - individuals believed to have information
vital to the case - and the Immigration and
Naturalisation Service is holding between 75 and 115
people on immigration concerns who may also be able
to help the investigation. Another 200 are being
sought.
The Chicago Tribune said the FBI believed many of
the hijackers had followed martial arts courses ahead
of the attacks and reported that some gyms had
handed over their records to investigators.
FBI director Robert Mueller said last week as he
released what he said were the names of the hijackers
that his bureau had "a fairly high level of confidence"
that they were their true identities.
But at least one Arabic newspaper, the Saudi-owned
Asharq al-Awsat, said this week it had found two of
the Saudis named on the list, Abdelaziz al-Omari and
Said Hussein Gharamallah al-Ghamdi, alive and well.
Omari said he had been at work at the Saudi
telecommunications authority in Riyadh when the
September 11 attacks happened and had nothing to do
with them, adding that his passport had been stolen in
Denver, Colorado in 1995. He said that he could not
be the man with pilot training the FBI claimed he was,
saying "I am an electrical engineer and I have no idea
how to fly a plane." Ghamdi, a Saudi Arabian Airlines
pilot reported to be in Tunisia, told the paper he saw
his photograph on television - received by the FBI
from a Florida flight school - but said he had been in
Tunis for the past nine months, training with
colleagues.
The Chicago Tribune said it had a report that another
"hijacker", Waleed M. Alshehri, was also a pilot for
Saudi Arabian Airlines and was still alive, according
to his father.
It also said that the Saudi press had found Amer
Kamfar, who the FBI was seeking as a suspect in the
case, was a pilot living in Saudi Arabia. There was
confusion over the nationalities of the three men
arrested in Detroit Tuesday, who the FBI named as
Ahmed Hannan, 33, Karim Koubriti, 23, and Farouk
Ali-Halmoud, 21.
"They stated they were Moroccan," Special Agent
Hank Glaspie said Wednesday, but added that under
questioning they also said they were from Albania and
Iran. The men were arrested for possession of falsified
documents, including US immigration forms and a
visa, as agents searched for a fourth man, identified as
Nabil Al-Marabh, who is on the FBI's watch list of
suspects or potential witnesses related to the
bombings.
A state spokeswoman said Marabh holds a
commercial driver's licence, originally obtained using
Canadian identification documents, allowing him to
drive trucks and transport hazardous materials.
A search of the Detroit house where the three were
arrested uncovered materials believed to belong to
Marabh, including diagrams of that city's international
airport and information about a US military base in
Turkey. Federal agents, who are sifting through more
than 96,000 leads in their search for the perpetrators of
last week's terrorist attacks, believe the four hijacked
airplanes which terrorists turned into guided missiles
were only the beginning of an onslaught on US
targets.
"We cannot rule out that additional aircraft were
targeted," Attorney General John Ashcroft said
Wednesday while touring the Pentagon crash site,
where 189 people are confirmed to have died.
To facilitate the investigation, Ashcroft revised
regulations governing the detention of immigrants,
giving the Immigration and Naturalisation Service 48
hours to decide whether or not to charge an immigrant
in custody or "additional reasonable time, if
necessary," instead of the previous 24.
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