Organizers of the September 11, 2001 attacks
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September 11, 2001 attacks were carried out by 19 hijackers, with planning and organization of the attacks involving numerous additional members of al-Qaeda.
Hijackers
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, 26 al-Qaeda terrorist conspirators sought to enter the United States to carry out a suicide mission. In the end, there were 19 hijackers in all: five on three of the flights, and four on the fourth. Soon after the attacks, the FBI identified all 19. At least eight of the names on the FBI's list have been called into doubt by controversial opposing parties; see links by name.Organization
U.S. authorities believe the hijackers were in two groups: six core organizers, who included the four pilots and two others; and the remaining thirteen who entered the United States later in pairs in the spring and summer of 2001 via the United Arab Emirates.
The six primary organizers among them were Khalid al-Mihdhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi, and the pilots (Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah, and Hani Hanjour).
Some of the terrorists did not seem to match the profiles of past suicide terrorists as young, poor, and uneducated. However the "muscle" hijackers, as opposed to the pilots, were between 20 and 28 years old and most were unmarried and without familial attachments. According to page 231 of the report, fifteen of the terrorists came from Saudi Arabia. The remaining four came from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon. According to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, this distribution reflects the proportions of trainees at al-Qaeda camps and the relative ease of obtaining U.S. visas for Saudi citizens. (See: Visa Express.)
There are persistent rumors some of the hijackers may have travelled under false passports or been misidentified. Commission spokesman Jonathan Stull stated "The Sept. 11 hijackers, surprisingly, used their real names when boarding their flights that morning." "The hijackers had liberally used document fraud prior to that date, some to ease entrance into the United States, others to move around once they were here and to obtain drivers' licenses they needed to board the airplanes." [link] According to the 9/11 Commission Report, "Of the checkpoints used to screen the passengers of Flights 11, 77, 93 and 175 on 9/11, only Washington Dulles International Airport had videotaping equipment in place." Security camera footage and stills from Dulles were released in July of 2004[link] from the Motley Rice law firm.
List of the hijackers
- Note: There have been variations in the spelling of the names of the alleged hijackers in differing accounts of the attacks. This is because there is no one correct way of transliterating from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin alphabet.
- * Mohammed Atta (Egyptian)
- * Waleed al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian)
- * Wail al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian)
- * Abdulaziz al-Omari (Saudi Arabian)
- * Satam al-Suqami (Saudi Arabian)
- Mohammed Atta is believed to have flown Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
- * Marwan al-Shehhi (from the United Arab Emirates)
- * Fayez Banihammad (from the United Arab Emirates)
- * Mohand al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian)
- * Hamza al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian)
- * Ahmed al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian)
- Marwan al-Shehhi is believed to have flown Flight 175 into the South Tower.
- * Hani Hanjour (Saudi Arabian)
- * Khalid al-Mihdhar (Saudi Arabian)
- * Majed Moqed (Saudi Arabian)
- * Nawaf al-Hazmi (Saudi Arabian)
- * Salem al-Hazmi (Saudi Arabian)
- Hani Hanjour is believed to have flown Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
- * Ziad Jarrah (Lebanese)
- * Ahmed al-Haznawi (Saudi Arabian)
- * Ahmed al-Nami (Saudi Arabian)
- * Saeed al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian)
- Ziad Jarrah is believed to have crashed Flight 93 into the Pennsylvania countryside to prevent or end an assault by the passengers.
The Hamburg cell and other conspirators
The terrorist attack itself was planned by Khalid Sheik Mohammed and approved by Osama bin Laden; according to the 9/11 Commission Report, Mohammed personally chose the hijackers, and bin Laden approved of the decision. Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah became the organizers of the plot. Investigators say that Mohammed Haydar Zammar acted as the "travel agent" to Afghanistan.
Three of the hijackers, along with Ramzi Binalshibh, Said Bahaji, and Zakariyah Essabar were members of the Hamburg cell. After Atta, al-Shehhi, and Jarrah left for the United States, Binalshibh provided money to the conspirators. Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali, met with two of the hijackers in Kuala Lumpur in 2000. Hambali also gave money to alleged 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui. The members of the cell fled Germany before the terrorist attacks.
Some of the money that financed the terrorist attack seems to have originated from Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mohammed Yousef Mohamed Alqusaidi, who may be Marwan al-Shehhi's brother. Another conspirator is Abu Abdul Rahman. Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Khallad, assisted the hijackers in many ways, and unsuccessfully sought a visa to enter the United States and participate in the attacks.
Interviews with detained al Qaida members have identified ten hijacker candidates who did not participate in the attacks for various reasons. This people were identified as Mohamed Mani Ahmad al Kahtani, Khalid Saeed Ahmad al Zahrani, Ali Abd al Rahman al Faqasi al Ghamdi, Saeed al Baluchi, Qutaybah al Najdi, Zuhair al Thubaiti, Saeed Abdullah al-Ghamdi, Saud al Rashid, and Mushabib al Hamlan, and Abderraouf Jdey.
Claims of stolen identity
Several reports, from shortly after the attacks, said that some of the men named as hijackers on 9/11 were alive, and had been victims of identity theft. These thefts were said to have occurred as long ago as 1995.
- [BBC News - Hijack 'suspects' alive and well]
- [LA Times - FBI Chief Raises New Doubts Over Hijackers' Identities]
- [Islam Online - Saudi Suspects in U.S. Attacks Were Not in the U.S.]
- [CNN - Details of hijacking suspects released]
See also
- 20th hijacker
- Operation Bojinka
- 2001 anthrax attacks
- Taliban
- War on Terrorism
- U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
External links
- [The Final 9/11 Commission Report]
- [Search the 9/11 Commission Report indexed by individual paragraphs, with clustered search results]
- [Network Map] of how hijackers were connected to each other and color-coded by their flight.
- [A Terrorist Profile Emerges That Confounds the Experts] The New York Times 15-September-2001
- [F.B.I. Documents Detail the Movements of 19 Men Believed to Be Hijackers] The New York Times 15-September-2001 To be incorporated
- [FLIGHT SCHOOL: Learning Where Suspects Studied Is 'Trickier Than It Sounds'] The New York Times 15-September-2001 To be incorporated
- [FBI Press Release], September 27, 2001.
- [The Immigration and Naturalization Service's Contacts With Two September 11 Terrorists: A Review of the INS's Admissions of Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, its Processing of their Change of Status Applications, and its Efforts to Track Foreign Students in the United States] U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General 20-May-2002 To be incorporated
- [portal.telegraph.co.uk] (UK report that not all of the "hijackers" were actually on the planes)
- [Independent reporting of alleged hijacker claims] with additional links
- [Saudis Say Cash to Friend of Hijackers Was Charity], The New York Times, November 24, 2002 to be incorporated
- [Evidence against the theories that some of the named hijackers are still alive.]
- [Saudis Arabia Admit Hijackers of Sept. 11 Attacks were Citizens]
- [The 9/11 Hijackers], 2005, Washington Post.
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