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The terrorist attacks on 9/11 impacted every single person in the United States and most people around the world. To this day, those terrorist attacks impact how we travel and our overall sense of security. All this week on "Nightcast" at 10 p.m., Chief Political Reporter Tom Hauser will look at various aspects of those attacks from a Minnesota perspective. We started on Tuesday with how 9/11 unfolded in Minnesota. On Wednesday, KSTP talked to relatives of victims of 9/11 about how their families and others are honoring their loved ones. On Thursday, we heard from a flight instructor and...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. is detaining a Saudi man in Cuba who is believed to be the intended 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror plot, sources said yesterday. The Al Qaeda agent, identified by officials only as al-Qahtani, was intercepted in August 2001 by an alert Customs inspector at the Orlando airport but wasn't held, sources said. "He was a little hinky when he came in and they put him on the next flight out," a senior law enforcement official told the Daily News. Al-Qahtani was later picked up by coalition forces in Afghanistan and transferred to the...

Charges dropped against alleged 20th hijacker: Pentagon WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon has dropped charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged "20th hijacker" in the September 11 attacks on the United States, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday. Susan Crawford, the convening authority for war crimes trials by special military commissions, gave no explanation in dropping the charges against al-Qahtani "without prejudice," said Commander Jeffrey Gordon. "They have been dismissed without prejudice, which means they can be reinstituted at any time," he said of the charges.

Susan Crawford, the retired judge in charge of determining which Guantanamo detainees should be tried by a U.S. military commision, has refused to refer the case of Mohammed al-Qahtani to prosecutors because of that assessment, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. "We tortured (Mohammed al-) Qahtani," Crawford told the Post. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution. Military prosecutors have accused al-Qahtani of helping to plan the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, and believe he may have sought to participate, possibly as the "20th hijacker." The United States had...

A board reviewing the status of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has decided against releasing a Saudi who U.S. authorities believe narrowly avoided becoming one of the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. Lawyers for prisoner Mohammed al-Qahtani asked the Periodic Review Board last month to send the prisoner to a rehabilitation center in Saudi Arabia for treatment of severe mental illness. The board, made up of representatives of six government agencies, turned down the request in a statement released Wednesday. …

Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, whose real name was Ali Mohammed al-Fakheri, 46, took his own life in his prison cell, according to the Libyan newspaper Oea. Information gained from the interrogation of al-Libi was cited on several occasions by the Bush administration as justification for the war in Iraq. He told his CIA interrogators that al-Qaeda had sent two men to Iraq to seek training in chemical and biological weapons in December 2000. Classified documents added that the men did not return, so al-Libi did not know whether the training took place, and that, in any case, he was probably "intentionally...

Barack Obama released Osama Bin Laden’s bodyguard this week from Gitmo. Abdul Rahman Shalabi was trained as the 20th hijacker in the 9-11 attacks. 20th hijacker shalabi Obama released Shalabi to Saudi Arabia this week. Shalabi was released from Gitmo on September 21, 2015. Investor’s Business Daily reported, via Pamela Geller: “ How much does President Obama still want the Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison shuttered? He just released the man trained to be the 20th hijacker for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. In May, 2008, Rear Adm. David M. Thomas, then-commander of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay, sent...

An imprisoned man known as the "20th hijacker" in the 9/11 terror attacks is asking a South Florida federal judge for a transfer to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The request is part of a rambling, handwritten letter filed Wednesday in Miami federal court by Zacarias Moussaoui. He is serving a life prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2005 to conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers to kill Americans.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – A Malaysian recruited by al-Qaeda to pilot a plane in a second wave of Sept. 11-style attacks on the United States pulled out after observing the carnage of the 2001 assaults, Southeast Asian officials said Friday. President Bush on Thursday outlined details of an alleged plot to hijack an airliner and fly it into a skyscraper in Los Angeles. He said cooperation between Washington and several Asian countries helped expose it. The plan never appeared close to the stage where it could be put into execution. Scores of arrests in the aftermath of the Sept. 11,...

Attorneys call videos ‘sickening’ Lawyers for the man known as the "20th hijacker" of 9/11 are suing the U.S. government to release "sickening" videotapes they say show Guantanamo Bay interrogators torturing their client. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Federal Court on Monday by the Center for Constitutional Rights, said Mohammed Al-Qahtani was a victim “of torture and other profoundly cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment." "The American public should now be permitted to see what occurred for itself," the lawsuit said. Between 2002 and 2003, Al-Qahtani suffered through marathon interrogation sessions and was subjected to severe temperatures, sleep deprivation and other...

U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Minnesota flight instructor who notified his bosses of student Zacarias Moussaoui's suspicious behavior received a $5 million reward Thursday from the State Department, two government officials told CNN. Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted in 2006 of conspiring to kill Americans on September 11, 2001. Clarence "Clancy" Prevost was an instructor at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, when Moussaoui was a student there. Moussaoui, sometimes called the "20th hijacker," is the only person charged and convicted in connection with the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. ... Prevost, a retired Northwest...

A Saudi suspected of being the "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks has recanted his confession, saying he made false statements after he was beaten, abused and humiliated at Guantanamo, according to documents obtained Friday by The Associated Press. Mohammed al-Qahtani — who U.S. officials have said previously was subjected to harsh treatment authorized by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld — denied knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks in his first appearance before a military panel at Guantanamo Bay in October. "I am a businessman, a peaceful man," al-Qahtani testified under oath, nearly five years after he was...

HOMELAND INSECURITY'20th hijacker' in custody?Al-Qaida member arrested, said to know about Moussaoui activities Posted: December 10, 200312:27 p.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Authorities in Minneapolis have arrested a suspected al-Qaida operative under a shroud of secrecy. A law-enforcement official told the Minneapolis Star Tribune the unnamed man is said to have knowledge of some of the activities of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was indicted Dec. 11, 2001, on six conspiracy counts for allegedly joining in a plot to hijack and crash U.S. jetliners. According to the official, the detainee has confirmed some of investigators' suspicions about Moussaoui, who was arrested while learning to...

WASHINGTON - Al-Qaida has identified a would-be 20th hijacker for the Sept. 11 attacks as a Saudi operative who was killed in a 2004 shootout with his country's security forces. In a statement accompanying a new video, the terrorist network's propaganda arm identified Fawaz al-Nashimi, also known as Turki bin Fuheid al-Muteiry, as the operative who would have rounded out a team that ultimately took over United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field before reaching its intended target. A 54-minute video featuring al-Nashimi was obtained Tuesday by IntelCenter, a U.S. government contractor based in Virginia. U.S counterterrorism...

Excerpt - Al-Qaida has identified a would-be 20th hijacker for the Sept. 11 attacks as a Saudi operative who was killed in a 2004 shootout with his country's security forces. In a statement accompanying a new video, the terrorist network's propaganda arm identified Fawaz al-Nashimi, also known as Turki bin Fuheid al-Muteiry, as the operative who would have rounded out a team that ultimately took over United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field before reaching its intended target. A 54-minute video featuring al-Nashimi was obtained Tuesday by IntelCenter, a U.S. government contractor based in Virginia. U.S counterterrorism...

DUBAI (Reuters) - A Saudi militant killed in 2004 was due to have been the 20th suicide plane hijacker in the September 11, 2001 attacks, al Qaeda's media arm said in a statement on the Internet on Tuesday. "Turki bin Fheid al-Muteiri -- Fawaz al-Nashmi -- may God accept him as a martyr (was) the one chosen by Sheikh Osama bin Laden to be the martyrdom-seeker number 20 in the raid on September 11, 2001," said the statement. In May, bin Laden said Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in a U.S. court for the September 11 attacks, had...

Just flashed on Fox, jury has a verdict, to be read at 4:30PM EST!

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Prosecutors said al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui killed Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, by lying to federal agents weeks earlier to keep the plot secret. Defense attorneys called him an "al-Qaida hanger-on" who only dreamed he had a role in the worst terrorist attack in the nation's history. Summarizing 10 days of testimony in a tumultuous sentencing trial, lawyers painted sharply divergent views of whether the 37-year-old Frenchman was responsible for any of the nearly 3,000 deaths on Sept. 11. Then a jury of nine men and three women retired to decide whether he should be eligible for...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House. Moussaoui's testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom as he disclosed details he had never revealed before. It was in stark contrast to Moussaoui's previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions. Moussaoui testified Monday he lied to investigators when arrested...