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According to Philippines police records, Arminda Costudio, a waitress at the smart Manila Bay Club on Roxas Boulevard in those days, remembered being introduced to a man called Salem Ali, described as a "rich businessman from Qatar". He always seemed to be with Yousef, she said. Her description of him is the same as Murad's descriplion of Abdel Magid. Both referred to his having "excess meat" on his ring finger. She remembered specifically meeting "Salem Ali" twice at the Shangri-La hotel in Makati in mid-1994, where he wore a white tuxedo and paid for dinner with a wad of cash while giving out candies to the gathering. He had a girlfriend called Rose Mosquera, who worked at a bar in Quezon City.

Yousef's girlfriend Carol Santiago, whom he met at a Seven-Eleven store on Adriatico Street, said that she was introduced to a "Saudi businessman" by the name of Salem Ali. Arminda was the girlfriend of Wali Khan Amin Shah, the Afghan war veteran who was in on the plotting back in Karachi. He had subsequently joined the others in Manila. Meanwhile Khaled Sheilth travelled widely, as far as Brazil on at least one occasion, promoting the business enterprises he and the south-east Asia cell and the members of the Konsonjaya company were developing as a means of sustaining their terror enterprise. This gave Yousef time to both play and plot.

Murad told investigators that at around that time be had sparked an idea in Yousefs mind: why not crash a plane into the CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia? "OK, we will think about it," Yousef replied, according to Murad's account, before heading off with Khaled Sheikh for a scuba diving course at the resort of Puerto Galera, south of Manila.