Posted on 05/12/2002 12:04:08 AM PDT by swarthyguy
JEDDAH, 12 May — A Saudi Air Force pilot, Maj. Mubarak Saad Al-Ghamdi, 37, and six Americans including a navy lieutenant commander died in Pensacola, Florida in an air collision.
The US Navy announced yesterday that coast guard and navy ships and helicopters have called off a search after two navy jets vanished over the Gulf of Mexico and the seven missing are presumed dead.
“Extensive efforts in the search and rescue for the missing personnel were exhausted,” the navy website said.
Two T-39 Sabreliner jets, flown by two civilian contractor pilots, disappeared from radar on Wednesday afternoon about 40 miles south of Pensacola during a routine training mission.
The seven were assigned to Training Squadron 86, part of Training Wing 6, at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.
An investigation was under way to determine the cause of the crash of the Sabreliners, which are used to train student naval flight officers, the navy said.
Ghamdi, who was a Royal Air Force pilot at King Khaled Airbase in Khamis Mushayt, is survived by his wife, three daughters and two sons. His family is still in the United States.
I thought I'd ask some pre-school question!
I talked to him In Saudi. He was a good guy. Just as an aside, in the Saudi sqaudrons, all pictures of any deceased pilot are removed from the walls and his fellow pilots don't refer to him again, as if he never existed. It has to do with their religion and the idea that he's in a better place. Plus I think some superstition enters into it.
Why is a Saudi training in the USA?
Because they pay big bucks (it's loads of cash) for American planes and training.
I didn't put these items up for the sake of argument, just to inform.
I thought I'd ask some pre-school question!
Where else are they going to learn how to fly thei F-16s and F-15s?
The Saudis don't fly F-16s and if he was here to learn how to fly an F-15, he'd be at a an Air Force base, not a Naval Air Station.
December 15, 2001 -- WASHINGTON - U.S. officials are looking into whether the mystery dinner-guest sheik who lavishly praises Osama bin Laden in the notorious video might have recruited some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, a source said last night.
The sheik was identified yesterday as Ali bin Said al-Ghamdi, who sources said was a professor of Islamic theology in Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials said they did not know where he taught.
Al-Ghamdi was arrested in 1995 in Saudi Arabia for preaching his radical militant views of Islam and comes from the country's Assir province - also home to some of the hijackers, a U.S. official said last night.
ABC News, which first reported the investigation into possible terrorist recruiting by al-Ghamdi, said he'd been arrested twice in Saudi Arabia - though details on the second arrest weren't available.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia - nine of them from the same coastal city, Jeddah, as al-Ghamdi, according to the State Department.
Three of the hijackers shared the same name as "al-Ghamdi," though it's a common name in the Arab world and there's no indication that the sheik was related to any of the hijackers.
Al-Ghamdi doesn't indicate on the video that he knew any of the suicidal hijackers involved in the terror atrocities that left more than 3,000 people dead.
A State Department official said al-Ghamdi is a leader of the radical Wahhabi strain of Islam, which has been at odds with the mainstream Saudi leaders, who say they're trying to help the United States in the terrorism war.
The London-based Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, an advocate for Saudi dissidents, trumpeted al-Ghamdi's 1995 arrest, along with the arrest of another radical sheik, Hamud al-Shuaybi, around the same time.
Al-Ghamdi refers to al-Shuaybi in the now-notorious bin Laden video.
Describing a "vision" that al-Shuaybi had, al-Ghamdi said, "He said, 'There will be a great hit and people will go out by hundreds to Afghanistan.'
" 'I asked him, 'To Afghanistan?'
"He replied, 'Yes,' " al-Ghamdi said, adding that the other sheik predicted "hundreds of people will go out to Afghanistan."
Officials aren't sure what to make of al-Ghamdi's relaxed and talkative visit with bin Laden, which they believe occurred on Nov. 9 at a house in Kandahar.
They say Arab clerics regularly paid homage to bin Laden in Afghanistan, bringing him money and news from the mosques, but they're interested to know why he told bin Laden, "You have given us weapons."
"He's not all that significant and well-known a figure," a U.S. official said.
Officials say they don't know whether al-Ghamdi is still in Afghanistan or back in Saudi Arabia - or how he became paralyzed.
He appears on the video with his legs stretched out in front of him and covered by a blanket.
On the tape, al-Ghamdi indicates that he secretly entered Afghanistan, even while the United States was attacking. He does not say where he came from.
BAHRA, 19 January — Police arrested Thursday night a Saudi youth who fled after shooting to death two expatriate workers at a taxi company office in north Jeddah on Wednesday.
Muhammad Saeed Al-Ghamdi shot the two expatriates — an Indian and a Yemeni — when they prevented him from entering the office of a Saudi businessman, whom he apparently wanted to kill.
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