Posted on 03/12/2002 7:21:29 PM PST by The Drowning Witch
Six months after two terrorists died in the World Trade Center attack, the Florida flight school where they trained has received their student visa approval forms from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Huffman Aviation received the paperwork Monday acknowledging the INS approvals for Mohamed Atta, 33, of Egypt, and Marwan Al-Shehhi, 23, of the United Arab Emirates.
Atta and Al-Shehhi trained at Huffman in Venice, Fla., in 2000 and early 2001, and were aboard the separate flights that struck the World Trade Center towers.
The two initially entered the United States on visitor's visas but applied for an M-1 student visa, given to immigrants attending technical schools in the United States. Foreign students are generally allowed to study in the United States as long as they apply for student visas, said Russ Bergeron, a spokesman for the immigration service. Bergeron said the INS already had notified the men and the school last summer about the approvals. He described the paperwork Huffman received this week as "backup notification."
The INS approved Atta's request in July 2001 and Al-Shehhi's request the following month, Bergeron said.
"The important thing to recognize is the decisions to change their status were made ... before Sept. 11, and at the time there was no information made available to INS regarding these people and their link to terrorism," Bergeron said.
Both men were cleared to stay in the United States until Oct. 1, 2001, according to the forms, which were provided to The Associated Press by Rudi Dekkers, owner and president of the flight school. "When they hit the buildings they were approved to be here," Dekkers said.
Bergeron attributed the embarrassing delay to a backlog of documents at a federal paperwork processing center in London, Ky.
But John Conyers, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said the notification was a sign of the Bush administration's "misguided focus in pursuit of homeland security."
"I am astonished that while the INS is fixated on detaining and rounding up countless Arab-Americans without any justification, it has failed to take basic steps to ensure that visas are not issued to known terrorists," said Conyers, D-Mich.
U.S. authorities believe Atta was aboard American Airlines Flight 11, which struck the north tower of the trade center, and that Al-Shehhi was aboard United Airlines Flight 175, which struck the south tower 17 minutes later.
Dekkers said Atta and Alshehhi completed the paperwork on Aug. 29, 2000, just before they began their six-month flight instruction program at the school.
Dekkers, who said he faced scrutiny in the media after the attacks for admitting the students, said the formsshowed he had followed the law.
The forms, filled out by an assistant at Huffman, indicated that both men met the English language requirements to study at the school. Atta listed his nationality as Egyptian, while Alshehhi said he was from United Arab Emirates.
On the form, Atta's name is spelled "Mohomed." The documents indicated the academic term lasting up to 12 months would cost $27,300.
Both men studied at the Technical University in Hamburg, received pilot training at Huffman and practiced their flying on a Boeing 727 flight simulator in the Miami suburb of Opa-locka.
This was the statement that made me post this story.....
That's good news, actually. Given enough time and enough of them they're bound to produce the entire works of William Shakespeare!
But scary as hell if true.
LOL very funny, if we craved literature we'd be on the right track. Unfortunately we crave safety, therefore God Help US!
I wrote a very hyperbolic letter to an author at 2 am this morning, today I thought I'd been over-the-top, tonight this story broke.
Need I say more?
IMMIGRATION MORATORIUM NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I heard this evening on Fox that the official spin is that this is "an error which was caused by the antiquated notification system." Right. The computers in the underground bunkers for "the shadow government" were found to be totally antiquated, the FBI has a feeble computer system, and now the INS is claiming that their systems are "antiquated." The computerized tracking system for foreign students was stalled for years by congress, while the average congress critter probably doesn't know how to turn on a computer.
So what has the federal government been doing since Al Gore invented the internet?
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