Posted on 10/28/2001 5:17:22 PM PST by Sparticle
Most of the 19 hijackers involved in the September 11 attack on the US belonged to wealthy and close knit Saudi families and 11 of them had visited training camps of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Rather than being hired "muscle" or terrorists posing as Saudis with false identities, as previously thought, an investigation has revealed a close knit group that had links stretching back many years, a media report said on Sunday.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers are now known to be Saudis including the brother of a police commander, the son of a tribal chief, two teachers and three law graduates.
Well-educated, intelligent and in their mid-twenties, most were joined in the attack by at least one close male relative. Many of them had a history of making trips both to America and Afghanistan, a report in The Sunday Times said.
The discovery of the hijackers backgrounds is causing concern in the Kingdom, the report said. More than 80 people have been detained by the Saudi security police for alleged links to bin Laden and hundreds more than been questioned.
Until now the world's understanding of the hijackers and their motives has been based on information released publicly about three hijackers who lived in Hamburg, and led by Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian.
But information obtained from within Saudi Arabia has provided a detailed profile of the fundamentalist Muslims prepared to die to inflict massive casualties on US.
Like Bill Ayers(one of the Weather Underground leaders), who was the son of the CEO of Chicago based utility Commonwealth Edison.
Or, Diana Oughton, the famous terrorist who died making a bomb in the basement of a lower Manhattan townhouse. She was the daughter of a rich Illinois farmer/banker/businessman. (She grew up in Dwight, IL, not too far from my hometown. Oughton was sent away to private school(during HS), and had a Debutante Ball. This is UNUSUAL for Central IL. )
Oughton was profiled in a NY Times Pulitzer Prize winning series of stories. It later became a book: "Diana: Making of a Terrorist".
If they were busy working, they wouldn't have time for this stuff.
Unless you are from S.A....of course.
I also said something about these terrorists being from wealthy families a few weeks back. It's like they go out and get educated at places like Oxford and liberal Amer. universities and then turn around and bite the hands that fed them.
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