Mystery Flight (More info about 2 pass. of KLM flight on the no fly list)

Newsweek ^ | Apr. 25, 2005 issue | Mark Hosenball and Michael Hirsh

[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.

[I_dmc]

FedEx plane. Yep, nightmare scenario. Imagine if they loaded a OKC type bomb on it before stealing it.

[piasa]

Thanks... they must be determined little buggers if they are so determined to get here.

The two Saudis, the database reported, were brothers and pilots who had attended the same Arizona flight school as 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour.

I also found this and it may refer to the guys now trying to get in on the this recent flight :

(snip)
El-Atriss admitted selling fake documents to Khalid Almihdhar, who was on the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, and Abdulaziz Alomari, who was aboard one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center. However, he stressed that he had no idea who they were or what they had in mind.

There also were allegations that El-Atriss had contact with other hijackers. One claim was that Hani Hanjour, who piloted the plane that struck the Pentagon, had made seven calls to El-Atriss from a prepaid cell phone before Sept. 11.

Feinstein said the calls from Hanjour involved him asking when documents for two men would be ready.

Or maybe it refers to two other people unrelated to the guys we now have discovered heading to Mexico City. In any case it looks like the hijacker Hanjour expected to have two more people join the group.

As a sidenote, it appears that the El-Atriss "the fake ID man" was informed ahead of time of a raid on his home, and that gave hime time to flee to Egypt. I wonder who the informant was...

[etcetera]

If the U.S. had scrambled F16s to buzz the flight, the passengers might have considered themselves lucky to not have been shot down. That might remove any feelings of discomfort about mis-identification or inconvenience.

[piasa]

Hmmm - another Arizona flight school character :

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/530892/posts

Three more held in UK; Arrests Trio Questioned At High-security Police Station
by Paul Kelso, The Guardian (London); Guardian Home Pages, Pg. 4 September 24, 2001

British police were yesterday investigating the possibility that the al-Qaida terrorist network is active in the UK, as anti-terrorist branch officers continued to question three people of Arab extraction arrested at the weekend.

The arrests in London and Birmingham, part of the largest security operation in the UK since the Gulf war in 1991, were made following information received from the FBI, which is leading a huge global investigation into the attacks.

The suspects were being questioned about whether they had been directly involved in aiding and succouring those who had bombed the World Trade Centre, said the home secretary, David Blunkett.

Lotfi Raissi, 27, an Algerian pilot, and his wife Sonia, 25, were arrested at a flat in Colnbrook, Berkshire, near Heathrow airport, in the early hours of Saturday. Mr Raissi's brother Mohammed was arrested in Hounslow, west London, but was released without charge on Saturday afternoon. A fourth man, Abu Imard, 44, a mature student at Aston University in Birmingham, was also arrested. All three suspects were held under the Anti-terrorism Act 2000, and questioned at high-security Paddington Green police station in central London.

Under the act they can be held for up to seven days without charge, providing an order is sought from a magistrate. Yesterday police were granted an order allowing them to detain the suspects until Wednesday.

Mr Raissi was on an FBI watch list' of 200 people sought in connection with the attacks on New York and Washington. Before his arrest Mr Raissi said he was training at a flying school near Heathrow in order to qualify as a commercial pilot in Europe. Before arriving in the UK 18 months ago, he spent some time learning to fly in Arizona.

It's gone crazy. I've heard stories of FBI agents checking many trainee pilots out, here and in America,' he said. I am an airline pilot in Algeria but over here I am just a student. I have been living here nine months now, with my wife, training for my European conversion. I do have a relative in America who is training as a pilot and he has been interviewed by the FBI just because he is a Muslim.'

Speaking outside Paddington Green police station, Mr Raissi's uncle Kamal said his nephew was not guilty of any involvement in the terrorist plot. He has been in the UK for 18 months getting the qualifications to go with the exams he passed in Arizona. He only had one exam to pass before he became a fully qualified pilot. We are decent people, who have nothing to do with terrorist groups.' Sonia Raissi works for Air France on the customer service desk at Heathrow. Mohammed Raissi's wife works for Saudi Arabian airlines.

Mr Imard, a father of three, moved to the UK from the United States six months ago.

Mr Blunkett confirmed yesterday that the activities of individuals involved in the 21 organisations proscribed under the terrorism act were being closely monitored and action would be taken against them if they step over the line'.

In continental Europe, meanwhile, police made a number of arrests in connection with theUS attacks.

French police arrested three men in possession of what investigators believe is uranium-235, a material used in the construction of atomic weapons. The uranium is reported to have been supplied by members of the Russian mafia. Raymond Loeb, Serge Salfati and Yves Ekwella were in possession of air tickets to Kazakhstan at the time of their arrest.

Belgian police detained two men and seized bomb-making equipment in raids. A spokesman for the prosecutor's office said 100kg of sulphur and 50 litres of acetone were seized. It is clear that we have foiled the plans of a European terrorist network, but we do not yet know which objectives were targeted,' he said.

---

And, he's connected to Hani Hanjour's flight school :

To: Wallaby :
More info on the Raissi arrests here. It seems Lofti trained at same Arizona flying school (CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Arizona) and at the same time as Hani Hanjour, who investigators believe flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
6 posted on 09/24/2001 3:28:36 AM PDT by Lion's Cub

[Cindy]

OPINION: Arizona's the place to be for good flying weather, I guess.

[piasa]

No doubt about that. Florida's the same way.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Nobody would get away with a boxcutter type attack today. Furious passengers would mob them.

[Figment]

If 9/11 had been prevented, no one would have any concept of what was averted.This could have been another deadly strike at our nations heart. We'll never know

[ordinaryguy]

Apparently you couldn't be bothered to read the article before posting.

[Brian Allen]

Not hard, from following that aeroplane's odyssey, to reinforce the scary reality that "Homeland Security" [And every other American branch of gummint] gets to light-tackle the talent pool only after America's 25,000 private employers have fine-netted it for anyone with even half a brain!

I'd have had the aircraft arrested and on the ground at Guantanamo before you'da said "Jack Nicholson!"

[PGalt]

Bump;thanks;thanks.

[MeekOneGOP]

Thanks for the post and ping.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7529185/site/newsweek/

Another tidbit from this article, and bumping to others:

---

One of these hits—from an FBI database of terror suspects known as TIPOFF—smacked investigators right between the eyes. 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.

Was it a plot? The KLM 685 incident—which was not widely publicized by the U.S. government—is an illustration of just how hard it has become to tell ordinary guys from bad guys in the war on terror. Washington's concern about the KLM flight seems legitimate: in the past year, U.S. counterterrorism officials have cited intelligence indicating that Al Qaeda might be planning to use foreign-based airliners to launch attacks against the U.S. homeland. One U.S. counterterrorism official told NEWSWEEK that the two passengers were "bad dudes." And a European intelligence official said the two have "extensive but secondary" links to Al Qaeda.

[MeekOneGOP]

[pageonetoo]

...but due to supid politically correct policies, the FBI wasn't allowed to search his hard drive before 9-11?

Maybe you missed sometyhing about the Constitution. I know that the "Patriot" Act has stripped that document of meaning...

Have you ever heard of the thing about..."illegal search"? It does not matter what reason is giving for "suspending" the Constitution, it is WRONG!

No judge, in his right mind, would deny a search, when evidence is given to support a warrant, but fishing expeditions should only take place on the waters... even if it allows some damn terrorist to get by... But maybe you know better than the Founding Fathers...

[Stentor]

we need to start icing them.

Bingo.

[Peach]

Oh my gosh. Thanks for the ping. I'd have missed this.

[cardinal4]

"And a European intelligence official said the two have "extensive but secondary" links to Al Qaeda."

So what?

[Fedora]

Thanks!

[eno_]

but due to supid politically correct policies, the FBI wasn't allowed to search his hard drive before 9-11?

A few of the 9/11 hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, were stopped at least once by police in traffic stops. Had police been able to check their visas (expired) at those traffic stops, 9/11 would have been avoided or sharply attenuated, and Momhammed Atta would be an angry nobody in a cave somewhere. And we citizens could KEEP our privacy safe from a bungling, ham-fisted FBI.

[eno_]

It is a slam dunk cetainty that more than 5 planes were planned. The odds of pulling off that type of hijacking are nowhere near 100%. It was our misfortune that fully 5 planes were hijacked.

Ergo: 10-20 trained hijackers slipped the net on 9/11. Bet on it.