This is the first time that I have seen any information about what happened inside the highjacked planes.Anyone else hear of this?It seems very hard to believe.
HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - In harrowing exchanges before a German court, the son of a Sept. 11 victim asked an FBI (news - web sites) agent Tuesday to detail his mother's ordeal in the "hellish" minutes before her plane hit New York's World Trade Center.
Reuters Photo
"Are you able to conclude it would be akin to torture, what happened to my mother?" American Dominic Puopolo Jr. asked U.S. FBI special agent Matthew Walsh.
The exchanges came as Walsh gave a first day of testimony at the retrial of Mounir El Motassadeq, a Moroccan man accused of aiding and abetting the attacks that killed nearly 2,800 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
Puopolo, a co-plaintiff with the German state prosecution, was seeking to reinforce the case against Motassadeq.
He repeatedly asked Walsh to try to describe what his mother Sonia Morales Puopolo and her fellow passengers must have experienced after hijackers led by Mohamed Atta took control of American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles.
Walsh said the effects of pepper spray released by the hijackers were most severe at the front of the plane where Puopolo's mother, a severe asthmatic, was sitting in first-class seat 3J, one row behind two of the hijackers and five rows in front of Atta.
"It was certainly what I would describe as hellish on board the plane," Walsh said, adding two flight attendants had been stabbed and one passenger had his throat slashed.
"The plane was being flown very erratically and blood was being shed on board."
"It was horrible, but I had to bring back that this was murder," Puopolo, from Boston, told Reuters outside the courtroom.
He said he was haunted by the thought his mother had |
