A former pilot with Afghanistan's national carrier was on Thursday quoted as saying that he had helped train 14 Islamic militants, some holding European passports, to fly civilian aircraft.
The London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper quoted the pilot as saying from an undisclosed location in Afghanistan that the trainees had left the war-torn country nearly one year ago to undisclosed locations after they completed their training.
The newspaper did not say if the trainees were among the hijackers who slammed commercial aircraft into the Pentagon in Washington and the World Trade Center in New York on Tuesday.
"A group of 14 radical Islamist men received special training on flying civilian aircraft, including Boeings, of which Afghanistan's Ariana airlines owns three," the Arabic-language newspaper said.
It said the young trainees were Pakistanis, Afghans and Arab nationals. Some carried European passports and spoke fluent English.
U.S. officials have said Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, now a "guest" of the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan, was almost certainly responsible for the attacks. Bin Laden has been reported to have denied it.
U.S. law enforcement agents searched homes and businesses in Florida in connection with the attacks, focusing on an aviation school where two suspects may have received flight training, police and media said.
Asharq al-Awsat named the pilot as Captain Rasul Parwaz, but it said he asked that his surname be withheld.
It said he had retired from the state-run Ariana airline after the United Nations imposed sanctions on Afghanistan in 1999 for the Taliban's refusal to hand over bin Laden who the United States has blamed for the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.
The pilot said the training took place in the city of Bamiyan, where the Taliban have an airbase, the newspaper reported. A retired Pakistani general was among those who also trained the Islamic militants, who the pilot described as fanatics.
"He (the pilot) pointed out that seven of those (trainees) spoke English fluently to the extent that they translated flying manuals into languages in use in Afghanistan, including Farsi, Urdu and Pshtun," the newspaper said.
9/16/01 Turkish Daily News