Here's the best collection of photographs I've found: </font size>
America Under Attack - Photographs: An Inside View</font size></font color>
Posted on 09/17/2001 2:29:14 PM PDT by Wallaby
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
RAID ON WOMAN'S LONDON HIDEOUT STEPHEN WRIGHT DAILY MAIL (London) September 17, 2001
A WOMAN suspected of being linked to the U.S. suicide hijackers was being hunted throughout Britain last night.
Her details were circulated nationwide after Scotland Yard anti-terrorist officers raided a flat in South London.
He is said to have attracted the suspicions of an instructor because he wanted flight simulator training only on how to fly a 747 horizontally - not to do takeoffs and landings.
They had been tipped off by FBI agents, who found the woman's name and address among documents in a Florida house used by one of the terrorists.
The woman, believed to be in her 30s and from North Africa, was no longer in the ground-floor Brixton flat, although police believe she is still in Britain. The London raid came as the hunt for those who helped the terror gang spread throughout the world - and more evidence emerged of links to Saudi multi-millionaire Osama Bin Laden. In another London connection, FBI agents in New York are questioning a man arrested by anti-terrorist police at Heathrow a few hours after the terror attacks.
Mufti Mohammed Khan is suspected to be the second in command of the Jaish-i-Mohammed, one of the most dangerous terrorist cells in the world, which is linked to Afghan-based Bin Laden's Al Qaeda umbrella group.
The group was formed two years ago and has been particularly active in recruiting and planning in Britain, despite being banned.
It claimed responsibility for the attack last year on the U.S. destroyer Cole. Seventeen sailors died when suicide bombers rammed the warship with a boat laden with explosives in the Yemeni port of Aden.
FBI agents are also holding an Algerian who lived in London for several years.
Zakarisis Moussaoui, 33, was arrested after a tip-off from France.
Described as an Islamic militant linked to a training camp run by Bin Laden, he had been learning to fly in Minnesota.
Moussaoui, a dual French and Algerian national who had several passports, had flight manuals and technical information on Boeing aircraft among his possessions when he was held on August 17.
According to reports in Paris, French security services had provided the Americans with a dossier clearly identifying him as an Islamic militant working with Bin Laden.
He is said to have attracted the suspicions of an instructor because he wanted flight simulator training only on how to fly a 747 horizontally - not to do takeoffs and landings.
French officials say the U.S. failed to realise his significance, one of several disturbing flaws in intelligence and police work in the weeks before the bombings.
U.S. officials admitted yesterday that the FBI had been searching for two of the hijackers for three weeks before Tuesday's attack after being told that one was associated with Bin Laden.
The FBI began its manhunt for Khalid Al Midhar and Salem Al Hamzi on August 21 on the East Coast but did not ask for help from its office in San Diego, California, until 48 hours before the attack, despite knowing that the pair had previously stayed in Los Angeles.
The CIA had sounded the alarm - there had already been warnings that Bin Laden's followers were planning a spectacular strike in the U.S. - after it emerged that Al Midhar had been caught on a surveillance videotape meeting one of the suspects in the USS Cole attack.
The U.S. Justice Department has named Al Midhar and Al Hamzi as being among the hijackers who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on Tuesday.
Police subsequently discovered that the two men had been living in San Diego for months.
Officials in the U.S. say evidence is mounting against Bin Laden as the prime figure in the atrocity.
Hijacker Wali Al Shehri, 24, is said to have been at one of Bin Laden's training camps in eastern Afghanistan 18 months ago and to have entered America two weeks before the attack.
Another of the 19 identified as making up four kamikaze cells, Mohammad Atta, 33, was a member of the Egyptian terrorist organisation Islamic Jihad, a major part of Al Qaeda.
He is said to have been the commander of the units that flew into the World Trade Centre.
More details also emerged at the weekend of the degree of planning that went into the attack.
Some of the hijackers had been travelling regularly to the U.S. for almost ten years. Many had working visas and some had moved their wives and children to live with them. Others appear to have been told to drink alcohol and chat-up local women - actions no Islamic fundamentalist would be expected to take.
Newsweek magazine reported yesterday that five of the 19 hijackers may even have received training at U.S. military installations in the 1990s.
It said their names were similar to people who had trained at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida; the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama, and Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.
A Justice Department spokesman revealed last night that some 25 people have been held for immigration violations during the massive inquiry but none has been formally charged, either over immigration or crimes related to the hijackings. Some were said to be co-operating with the FBI.
One was being held on a material witness warrant, which allows authorities to hold someone considered crucial to an investigation without charging him.
The unnamed man, said to be from the Middle East, was arrested on Thursday, soon after New York's Kennedy airport re-opened. He is said to have been carrying false identification papers and a pilot's licence. The address on his U.S. visa was the same Boston building that was used by three of the hijackers.
Also among the 25 are two men detained at a train station in Fort Worth, Texas. The two, searched during a routine anti-drug operation, carried knives similar to the ones used in the hijacks.
Let me see if I've got this right: a man of obvious Middle Eastern ancestry tells a flight instructor he only wants to fly horizontally, and that "raises suspicions." Hmmm, after years of hearing about terrorist acts, it would seem to me that anybody with a double digit IQ would have had this guy checked out.
Here's the best collection of photographs I've found: </font size>
America Under Attack - Photographs: An Inside View</font size></font color>
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