Abdulrahman al-Omari, who was named by the U.S.
Department of Justice as one of the suicide hijackers of
American Airlines flight 11, the first airliner to crash into the
World Trade Center, is alive and living in Jeddah, Saudi
Arabia. He was astonished to find himself accused of
hijacking, as well as being dead. He?s gone to the U.S.
consulate in Jeddah to demand an explanation, but so far
hasn?t received one.
It is possible that the hijacker adopted Mr al-Omari?s identity
but, if he had been using the same false name while training
as a pilot in the U.S., this would probably have been
discovered. The U.S. described him as a father of four and al-
Omari does have four children. According to a Saudi
journalist, he ?is one nervous guy.?
Al-Omari claims he was at his desk at the Saudi
telecommunications authority in Riyadh when the attacks
took place. ?I couldn?t believe it when the FBI put me on
their list,? he says. ?They gave my name and my date of
birth, but I am not a suicide bomber. I am here. I am alive.
I have no idea how to fly a plane. I had nothing to do with
this.?
He says his passport was stolen when his apartment in
Denver, Colorado, was burgled in 1995. He had been
studying engineering at Denver University since 1993. He
was given a new passport in Riyadh on December 31, 1995
and returned to America to resume his studies in January
1996.
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The identities of four of the 19 suspects accused of having
carried out the attacks are now in doubt. Saudi Arabian pilot
Waleed Al Shehri was one of five men that the FBI said had
deliberately crashed American Airlines flight 11 into the
World Trade Center. His photograph was released, and has
since appeared in newspapers and on television around the
world. Now he?s protesting his innocence from Casablanca,
Morocco.
He told journalists there that he had nothing to do with the
attacks on New York and Washington, and had been in
Morocco when they happened. He admits he attended flight
training school at Dayton Beach and is the same Waleed Al
Shehri the FBI has named, but he says he left the U.S. in
September last year, became a pilot with Saudi Arabian
airlines and is currently on a further training course in
Morocco.
FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged on Thursday that
the identity of several of the suicide hijackers is in doubt. An
FBI spokesman says, ?The identification process has been
complicated by the fact that many Arabic family names are
similar. It is also possible that the hijackers used false
identities. If we have made mistakes then obviously that
would be regrettable but this is a big and complicated
investigation.? When the list of hijackers was first published,
Robert Mueller, the FBI director, said that he was ?fairly
confident? that the names were not aliases.
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click here.
Saudi Airlines says it is considering legal action against the
FBI for seriously damaging its reputation and that of its
pilots. An FBI statement said that 19 of their pilots ?have
been identified as hijackers aboard the four airliners.?
Photographs and personal details were sent around the world
with an appeal for ?information about these individuals, even
though they are presumed dead.?
Saudi pilot Saeed Al-Ghamdi, 25, was named as a terrorist
on the United Airlines flight headed for the White House that
crashed in Pennsylvania. ?You cannot imagine what it is like
to be described as a terrorist -- and a dead man -- when you
are innocent and alive,? he says. His airline is angry too.
They brought Al-Ghamdi back to Saudi Arabia last week for a
10-day holiday to avoid arrest or interrogation.
An airline official says, ?We are consulting lawyers about
what action to take to protect the reputation of our pilots.?
Al-Ghamdi faced further embarrassment when CNN flashed a
photograph of him around the world, naming him as a hijack
suspect. The FBI published his personal details but with a
photograph of somebody else, probably the hijacker who
had ?stolen? his identity. CNN, however, showed a picture of
the real Al-Ghamdi.
He says CNN had probably got the picture from the Flight
Safety flying school he attended in Florida. CNN has since
broadcast a clarification saying that the photograph may not
be that of the accused.
He first knew that he was on the FBI?s list when he was told
by a colleague. Speaking from Tunisia, he says, ?I was
completely shocked. For the past 10 months I have been
based in Tunis with 22 other pilots learning to fly an Airbus
320. The FBI provided no evidence of my presumed
involvement in the attacks.?
Two other men accused of being terrorists are Salem al-
Hamzi and Ahmed al-Nami. Al-Hamzi is 26 and had just
returned to work at a petrochemical complex in the industrial
eastern city of Yanbou after a holiday in Saudi Arabia when
the hijackers struck. He was accused of hijacking the
American Airlines Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon. He says, ?I
have never been to the United States and have not been out
of Saudi Arabia in the past two years.? The FBI described
him as 21 and said that his possible residences were Fort Lee
or Wayne, both in New Jersey.
Al-Nami, 33, from Riyadh, an administrative supervisor with
Saudi Arabian Airlines, says he was in Riyadh when the
terrorists struck. He says, ?I?m still alive, as you can see. I
was shocked to see my name mentioned by the American
Justice Department. I had never even heard of Pennsylvania
where the plane I was supposed to have hijacked.?
He had never lost his passport and found it ?very worrying?
that his identity appeared to have been ?stolen? and
published by the FBI without any checks. The FBI had said
his ?possible residence? was Delray Beach in Florida.
To learn more,
click here.
?It was proved that five of the names included in the FBI list
had nothing to do with what happened,? Saudi Arabia's
Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told the Arabic Press
after meeting with President George W. Bush on September
20th. Saudi officials at the embassy were unable to verify
the whereabouts of the fifth accused hijacker, Khalid Al-
Mihdhar. However, Arab newspapers say he?s still alive.
The transcript of a phone call made by Flight Attendant
Madeline Amy Sweeney to Boston air traffic controls on
September 11 shows that the flight attendant gave the seat
numbers occupied by the hijackers -- seat numbers which
were not the seats of the men the FBI claimed were
responsible for the hijacking.
To learn more,
click here.
Besides naming living pilots as dead hijackers, the U.S.
government has--fantastically--issued visas to 2 of the
actual September 11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan
al-
Shehhi, so that they can study at the flight school in Venice,
Florida where so many of the hijackers learned their flying
skills.
This was done not six months ago or a year ago, but on
March 11, just two days ago. Ironically, the nation was
observing the six-month anniversary of the disaster on the
day the Immigration and Naturalization Service made this
absurd mistake.
Atta was the notorious terrorist who is suspected of having
planned the entire attack.
New York Times reporter David Johnston wrote on
Wednesday, March 13 that Huffman Aviation received the
notification on Monday, March 11, exactly 6 months after the
terrorist attacks.
The I.N.S. is embarrassed. A spokesman for the immigration
agency, Russ Bergeron, says, ?We certainly regret [this]. It
was our responsibility to notify the contractor that the
notifications were not needed in this case.?
Unknowncountry.com Opinion: One mistake after another,
for
years, leads to the inescapable conclusion that the Federal
Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency are
dangerously incompetent, to the point that congress should
begin studying not how to reform them, but how to reform
the fundamental structures of federal law enforcement and
intelligence gathering, perhaps even to replace these
dubiously effective organizations. We cannot win our war
against terrorism without effective investigative agencies.
They are our front-line defense against the hidden, the
cunning and the cowardly. Right now, the effectiveness of
that defense is, to say the least, questionable.
