Suspect linked to Minnesota
By PATRICK HOWE
Associated Press Writer
ST. PAUL -- The investigation into this week's terrorist attacks reached Minnesota on Wednesday, with one person detained on an immigration issue. And Minnesota was among several states where flight schools were being contacted as FBI agents ran down reports that some of the hijackers trained in America.
Authorities wanted to question the person held in Minnesota about the plot, but the person refused and requested a lawyer, a law enforcement source speaking on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press.
U.S. officials confirmed that a few weeks ago the FBI detained the Arab man in Minnesota when he tried to seek flight simulator training for a large jetliner. Those who hijacked the four airliners received similar training.
Officials said the FBI had no reason to charge him at the time and instead began deportation proceedings. Those proceedings were ongoing when the attacks took place Tuesday, and he was re-detained.
The Associated Press learned a man who shared a Florida home searched by FBI agents Wednesday lived at a St. Paul house from the end of January through October 2000. Ali Alamri, believed to be 27, was placed in the home through a referral service, according to the owner of the house near Macalester College.
Sherry Sandey, president of International Home Stay Services Inc., the agency that placed Alamri, said she believed another man, Abdulrahman Saeed Alomari, and Alamri were brothers, and that Alomari stayed at a Days Inn in suburban Bloomington.
Alomari, 38, later moved to Vero Beach, where his house was among at least two searched by FBI agents for 12 hours on Wednesday; the agents left with several garbage bags of evidence.
FAA records list a pilot license for an Abdulrahman Saeed Alomari, though it wasn't certain if that was the same man who lived in both St. Paul and Vero Beach. The address on the pilot license was Jedda, Saudi Arabia.
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14 Sep 2001
The flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder have both been recovered from the Pentagon crash site and are now in federal authorities' hands.
"They are damaged but may still yield useful information," a Pentagon spokesman said.