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Pastimes : Terrorist Attacks -- NEWS UPDATES ONLY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cAPSLOCK who wrote (178)	9/27/2001 4:45:11 PM
From: ExCane	Respond to of 602

Ashcroft Releases Photos of Hijackers Story Filed: Thursday, September 27, 2001 4:22 PM EDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General John Ashcroft on Thursday released photographs of the 19 suspected hijackers, saying that it is part of ``a national neighborhood watch'' in which investigators hope Americans might recognize some of the hijackers. Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller asked any Americans who might recognize the photos to contact authorities. They said there were still questions about the true identities of some of the men, and they hoped the public's help might assist in solving those questions. ``What we are currently doing is determining whether, when these individuals came to the United States, these were their real names or they changed their names for use with false identification in the United States,'' said Mueller. The FBI director said there was evidence that one or more of the hijackers had had contacts with al-Qaida, the network associated with accused terrorist Osama bin Laden. He declined to be more specific. Mueller said the FBI believes the names and photographs match those on the manifests of the hijacked planes. Ashcroft said the total number of tips provided to investigators has passed 100,000. Mueller said the bureau has ``over 200,000 leads we are investigating.'' Some of the names have slightly different spellings and others have additional names added, compared to the list released by the FBI on Sept. 14. Mueller said the FBI is confident that the names and photos were the identities the hijackers had before entering the United States. The identities of at least four of the hijackers released Sept. 14 by the FBI have been challenged by people with the same or similar names. Saudi Arabia Embassy officials, for example, have said that a Saudi electrical engineer named Abdulaziz Alomari -- the same name as one of the hijackers on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon -- had his passport and other papers stolen in 1996 in Denver when he was a student, and reported the theft to police there at the time. The FBI director said that there was some evidence that ``one or more'' of the hijackers were related to each other. On another matter, Mueller said the FBI believes that arrests Wednesday of people allegedly involved in fraudulently getting commercial licenses to carry hazardous materials are not related to the terrorist hijackings. On Wednesday, FBI agents investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks assisted in the arrests of 10 Middle Eastern men in three states for fraudulently obtaining licenses to transport hazardous materials. Wednesday's sweep in Missouri, Michigan and Washington followed FBI warnings that terrorists may try to strike next using chemical or biological weapons. Another eight people who obtained bogus licenses were taken into custody Thursday and two were still at large, the Justice Department said. The locations of the eight arrested were not immediately available. A total of 20 people from seven states have been charged with falsely obtaining hazardous material licenses from a Pennsylvania state examiner. The examiner told the FBI he took payoffs in exchange for the permits between July 1999 and February 2000, according to court papers. The drivers didn't take required tests and some had suspended licenses at the time they got the permits. The concern about licenses to haul chemicals first surfaced last week when the FBI arrested Nabil Al-Marabh, 34, a former Boston cab driver. Al-Marabh holds a commercial driver's license and is certified to transport hazardous materials. The FBI appeared to be zeroing in on people who -- wittingly or unwittingly -- helped the 19 men authorities say hijacked four airliners and crashed them in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Nearly 7,000 people were dead or missing. Salvadoran national police director Mauricio Sandoval said the FBI had detained a man who allegedly helped the terrorists obtain false identification cards. Luis Martinez-Flores ``may have moved'' around ``with the terrorists in New York, Boston or Florida,'' Sandoval told a news conference. The name Luis Martinez-Flores turned up last week on a list of 21 people whose financial records the FBI had asked all U.S. banks to check. The 19 suspected hijackers were on the list, along with Martinez-Flores and one other person. Martinez-Flores apparently was being held by the U.S. immigration officials in Virginia as an illegal immigrant, Sandoval said. In Florida, Michael Hlavsa, chairman of SunCruz Casinos gambling cruise company, said two or three men linked to the hijackings may have been customers on a ship that sailed from Madeira Beach. One name on the passenger list from a Sept. 5 cruise was the same as one of the suspected terrorists, Hlavsa said. SunCruz Casinos turned over photographs and other documents to FBI investigators after employees said they recognized some of the men suspected in the terrorist attacks as customers. Authorities also were taking a new look at a 1998 meeting between Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks, and a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Afghanistan. Farouk Hijazi, an Iraqi intelligence officer who is Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, met with bin Laden in Kandahar, a region in southeastern Afghanistan where bin Laden is known to have training camps, a U.S. official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. It is not known what was discussed at the December 1998 meeting. Copyright © 2001 Associated Press Information Services, all rights reserved.