News | Money | Travel | Argument | Advancement | Enjoyment

Upgrade your browser for an improved site: Internet Explorer · Netscape

Independent > News > World > Americas

FBI says 50-strong team was behind hijackings

The Investigation

By Andrew Gumbel in LA and Imre Karacs in Berlin

14 September 2001

Investigators chasing up a wealth of leads, from suicide notes left by the hijackers to their parents, to credit card receipts, airline data and eyewitness testimony, indicated that they believed as many as 50 people were directly involved in the hijackings and explosions in New York and Washington.

Of those, about 40 had been accounted for, according to Justice Department sources tapped by the Los Angeles Times, while another 10 remained at large. Most, if not all of the suspects carried Middle Eastern passports, and an estimated 27 had received flight training in the United States, enabling them to take charge of the commercial jumbosused in the attacks.

The plotters are believed to have worked in highly secretive, semi-autonomous cells, spread across the eastern United States, and yesterday the Federal Bureau of Investigation was digging into and uncovering those cells in the Boston area and in south Florida.

Nobody was willing to speculate how exactly the identified suspects were linked to Osama bin Laden, the avowed enemy of the US living in hiding in Afghanistan who has been fingered by many politicians, security and intelligence experts as the most likely mastermind of the whole operation.

However, a consensus emerged in official circles that Mr bin Laden, if he was responsible, did not act alone. "Most of [the investigation] points to Osama bin Laden," said Charles Grassley, a Republican Senator from Iowa, after a briefing from law enforcement yesterday, "but the speculation at the end of the road is that he and his network were very much involved with Hezbollah, Fatah and other [organisations]".

According to FBI investigators, the hijacking teams made only minimal efforts to cover up their tracks, at least in the days immediately preceding the attacks. An examination of the aircraft passenger lists quickly turned up the names of those who died, and showed they had reserved seats both in business and economy class, presumably with a view to taking control of the whole aircraft as quickly as possible.

Within hours of the attacks, the FBI had taken the names of the suspects and pulled their bank, credit card and phone records, as well as their immigration and naturalisation papers. They also scrutinised footage from security cameras in airports and elsewhere, sought subpoenas and search warrants, and ordered electronic surveillance of suspects.

It became apparent that many of hijackers had paid for flight training  and had learnt to fly propeller planes and small jets  at various schools in south Florida and elsewhere. Three Florida schools in Daytona Beach, Vero Beach and Venice were searched on Wednesday, as were flight schools in southern California.

The Miami Herald reported that five of the suspects were regularly seen drinking and flashing wads of cash at a bar in the Miami suburbs. They were identified as Mohamed Atta, 33, Marwan al-Shehhi, Waleed al-Shehri, 28, Wael al-Shehri, 28, and Abdulatif al-Omari, 31. Their nationalities were shrouded in mystery, as conflicting reports suggested they were from Egypt, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. It was also not clear how many of them were brothers.

Atta and al-Shehhi were identified as students at the Huffman Aviation International flight school in Venice, and as the two men who rented a green Mitsubishi Mirage found parked at Logan airport in Boston. They are believed to have been on board the American Airlines plane, Flight 11, that crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre.

The Herald further reported that a certain Adnan Bukhari of Vero Beach had been taken into federal custody, although this could not be confirmed.

Another Vero Beach man, Amer Mohammed Kamfar, was said by police to be at large and possibly armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle.

Meanwhile, in Massachussetts, progress was slower in uncovering a possible cell believed to have been involved in the attacks. One Boston-area man, Sata Suqami, was identified as one of the men on AA Flight 11. But the results of a police raid on the the Westin Hotel in Boston's Copley Square on Wednesday appeared to be slightly disappointing. Three men detained were later released without being charged.

New information was meanwhile emerging about the intentions and final moments of the hijackers. After Wednesday's announcement that both the White House and the president's plane, Air Force One, had been targets, there was mounting speculation that the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco, may have been shot down by the US military.

Initial reports suggested the hijackers on that plane were overcome by a group of heroic passengers who understood they were going to die anyway. There were also some early reports that the jet had been shot down. One passenger talking on a cell phone reported seeing white smoke and hearing an explosion before his phone went dead. Residents in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, said they had seen a second aircraft in the sky before the crash and debris as far away as eight miles from the crash site.

"We have not ruled out that,'' an FBI spokesman, Bill Crowley, told a news conference about the possibility of a fighter jet shooting the Boeing 757 down. The plane was believed to be heading either to the Presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, or to Washington.

The investigation was moving far beyond America. Germany discovered yesterday that three of the hijackers had lived peacefully in their midst and learnt their aviation skills at Hamburg's Technical University.

Acting on an FBI tip-off, German police raided several homes in Hamburg and arrested a man who had worked at an airport and was believed to be linked to the conspiracy. Another unnamed man of Arabic origin was being sought last night.

Also in Americas