Posted on 04/16/2005 9:26:56 PM PDT by FairOpinion
Fifteen minutes after KLM Flight 685 took off from Amsterdam for Mexico City on April 8, Mexican authorities forwarded the names of all the passengers to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The reason: the flight was scheduled to pass through U.S. airspace.
by the time the Boeing 747 had finished its three-hour crossing of the Atlantic, Homeland Security screeners were on high alert. The names of two Saudi passengers aboard the KLM flight had begun producing "hits" on the screening center's lists of 70,000 suspect foreigners.
The two Saudis, the database reported, were brothers and pilots who had attended the same Arizona flight school as 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour. Soon the multiplicity of U.S. terror databases started pumping out similar hits. Fearing that Flight 685 might be a 9/11-style plot in the making, U.S. authorities refused the plane overflight rights, and Canada rejected a request to land. Much to the chagrin of its 278 passengers, the KLM jet made an exhausting odyssey back to Amsterdam.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
interesting. Thanks for the post.
"And a European intelligence official said the two have "extensive but secondary" links to Al Qaeda."
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Better safe, than sorry.
And I'll bet not one of them was mad at OBL.
Like they said in the article...act first, ask questions later. Mistakes are deadly
The two Saudis, the database reported, were brothers and pilots who had attended the same Arizona flight school as 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour.
Rather explains why Canada wouldn't let them land and Jamaica wouldn't allow them through their airspace. Remember how Zacharias Moussaoui just wanted to learn how to fly a 747 without learning how to takeoff or land, but due to supid politically correct policies, the FBI wasn't allowed to search his hard drive before 9-11?
Ping! If you want on or off my aviation ping list, please contact me by Freep mail not by posting to this thread.
Nothing happened to the alleged terrorists.
The flight turned back to Amsterdam, where they were made to get off, then released, they probably caught the next flight to Mexico, which didn't fly over US airspace.
What you need to worry about now...is how the brothers will eventually get to the US. I'm betting they end up flying from Amsterdam to Rio (a straight shot with no overflight of the US). And they probably will take a Air Mexico flight from Rio to Mexico City. Their intention...cross the "unguarded" border and make their way to some airport in the southwest. I doubt very seriously that they intend to obtain tickets and actually fly a US airline. My bet is that they will eventually take over some larger FEDEX type plane and use that for their mission. The sophistication that the US has gained over the past two years probably shocks these guys...they used to just fly straight into the US...and now they can't even fly into Mexico (if they cross US airspace).
Sorry, this is what the article said:
"That is partly why Dutch and other European authorities, lacking direct proof of a crime or plot, decided not to detain the two Saudis. Yet even the Europeans aren't completely on the same page. Officials with Dutch and U.S. intelligence say that after the two men arrived back in Amsterdam, they flew to London, where they were refused entry. Then they flew back to the Netherlands, where they were under surveillance before returning on their own to Saudi Arabia."
"U.S. officials fear that Latin America, and more particularly Mexico—with its porous U.S. border—may become a staging ground for Al Qaeda."
Oh really? Ya' think? Glad they 'fear' so much. SARCASM ON
"Thank God they were not terrorists afterall, or they would have been arrested."
I trust you are being sarcastic -- you should read the article. They seem to have all kinds of AQ connections.
You don't really expect the Europeans to actually arrest terrorists, do you?
I wonder if they considered flying well offshore along the east coast with a routing via Cuba.
Germany Releases 9/11 'Convict'
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/10/terror/main635101.shtml
The only Sept. 11 suspect ever convicted was freed by a Hamburg court Wednesday pending the outcome of his retrial on charges of aiding the suicide pilots.
Mounir El Motassadeq, 30, had been serving a maximum 15-year prison term in Hamburg since a court in the city convicted him in February 2003 of giving logistical help to the Hamburg al Qaeda cell that included three of the Sept. 11 pilots.
El Motassadeq was found guilty of the combined charges in his first trial. An appeals court has ordered a retrial starting June 16, saying he was denied a fair trial because the U.S. government refused access to a key witness in its custody.
Prosecutors allege el Motassadeq helped cell members conceal their involvement in the plot to attack the United States while they lived and studied in Hamburg.
El Motassadeq acknowledged during his trial that he trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and was friends with the three Hamburg-based suicide hijackers — Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah — but he denied any knowledge of the Sept. 11 plot.
If they are terrorists they should be treated as pirates and summarily executed.
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