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Inspector recalls would-be hijackerSaudi denied US entry at Fla. airport in 2001 was Al Qaeda fighter By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff, 1/27/2004 WASHINGTON -- Something gave immigration inspector Jose Melendez-Perez "the creeps" when he started to interview the Saudi who had flown from Dubai to Orlando, Fla., via London, on Aug. 4, 2001, the agent testified yesterday before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Mohamed al Kahtani's documents appeared to be genuine. A check of his name, birth date, and passport number turned up nothing suspicious. And immigration agents knew from experience to give "deference" to...

WASHINGTON: A Jordanian hijacker has been sentenced to 160 years in prison for an attempt to divert a Pan Am plane flight from Mumbai to New York in Karachi, the US Justice Department announced. Nineteen people were killed during the botched attempt led by Zaid Hassan Abd Latif Safarini, who has admitted his responsibility for the raid. The incident unfolded on September 5, 1986 , when Safarini and three accomplices took control of the plane at a stop in Karachi . The pilot and flight engineer managed to escape through a cockpit window, thus making takeoff impossible. The hijackers demanded...

FBI identifies another September 11 hijacker November 05 2003 at 08:57AM Washington - The United States Federal Bureau of Investigations has identified an al-Qaeda suspect who agents believe was the "20th hijacker" in the September 11 plot but left the country before the plan was realised, USA Today reported on Wednesday, citing a top federal law enforcement official. The official said the al-Qaeda operative got into the country but "had to leave" shortly before 19 hijackers carried out the attacks. "We are fairly confident we know who No 20 is," said the official, who is involved in September 11 investigation...

<p>FBI has new 9/11 hijacking suspect By Toni Locy, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — The FBI has identified an al-Qaeda operative who agents believe tried as late as August 2001 to join the 9/11 terrorist plot as the "20th hijacker," a top federal law enforcement official said Tuesday. "We are fairly confident we know who No. 20 is," said the official, who is involved in the 9/11 probe and asked not to be identified. The official said the unidentified al-Qaeda operative got into the USA but "had to leave" the country shortly before 19 hijackers carried out the attacks that killed more than 3,000 people. The official would not say why the operative left, whether he is alive or whether he is in U.S. custody.</p>

Hijackers in same hotel as Saudi minister By David Rennie in Washington (Filed: 03/10/2003) A senior Saudi Arabian official, now minister for the holy places, stayed at the same hotel as three September 11 hijackers the night before the suicide attacks. American investigators are trying to make sense of the disclosure that Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman al-Hussayen, who returned to Saudi Arabia shortly after the attacks, stayed at the Marriott Residence Inn in Herndon, Virginia. Three of the attackers stayed at the hotel that night and crashed a plane into the Pentagon the following day. His nephew's American lawyer, David...

The hijacker of a Turkish plane has explosives strapped to his body, according to reports. The plane, carrying 204 people, has landed in Athens, Greece. The Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to Ankara was hijacked after take-off from Istanbul at 8pm GMT. Turkey's Transport Minister said the sole hijacker was insisting on being taken to Berlin. Nothing is yet known about the demands of the hijacker. The plane first diverted course and began heading toward the Aegean coastal city of Izmir, but it later changed course again and began heading toward Greece, Ankara television reported. Several senior Turkish bureaucrats...

RABAT, Morocco: The Moroccan supreme court on Wednesday approved the extradition of a Lebanese Muslim extremist hijacker who escaped from a Swiss prison last year, judicial sources said. Switzerland had requested the extradition of Hussein Hariri, who was arrested in Morocco in December after he failed to return from a prison furlough in September. Hariri was sentenced to life in prison in February 1989 for killing a passenger and seriously wounding a flight attendant during a July 1987 hijacking. A date for the extradition - which a judiciary source said was imminent - has not been released. Hariri, 21 at...

The man behind the failed weekend hijacking of an Algerian airliner asked to be flown to North Korea, the head of Algeria's national security agency said on Monday. Ali Tounsi, head of the DGSN security services, said Farouk Bouleoudina, 37, was under the influence of anti-psychotic drugs when he attempted to hijack an internal flight yesterday from the eastern city of Constantine to the capital Algiers. Bouleoudina burst into the cockpit and demanded that the Boeing 737-800 change course for North Korea, claiming falsely that two accomplices had brought a bomb on board the aircraft. The flight captain told Bouleoudina...

Hussein Hariri, a Lebanese hijacker who escaped from jail in Switzerland, has been recaptured in Morocco after three months on the run. The Swiss authorities say they will be seeking to extradite Hariri. They have also launched an inquiry into the possiblity of an accomplice in his escape. Hariri received a life sentence in 1989 for killing a passenger and seriously wounding a flight attendant during the hijacking of an Air Afrique flight to Geneva in July 1987. But he failed to return to his cell at the Plaine de l'Orbe jail in canton Vaud in western Switzerland in September...

VAESTERAAS, Sweden (AP) — A Swedish court sentenced a former hijacking suspect Friday to four months in prison for weapons violations, saying he hadn't intentionally brought a gun to an airport in August. The district court in Vaesteraas said Kerim Chatty's explanation that he had forgotten the gun in his carryon luggage couldn't be dismissed. The 29-year-old was arrested Aug. 29 at the airport in Vaesteraas, about 60 miles west of Stockholm, after security officials found a 6.35-mm pistol in his hand luggage. He was originally suspected of planning to hijack a Ryanair flight to London, but prosecutor Thomas Haeggstroem...

PARIS (AP) — A former Italian policeman accused of hijacking two airplanes, including a flight that landed safely in France last month, hanged himself in his jail cell, prosecutors said Saturday. Stefano Savorani, 29, had a history of mental illness. Guards discovered his body shortly after midnight Friday. Savorani had been held in the central French city of Lyon since the Nov. 27 hijacking attempt, during which he claimed to be a member of the al-Qaida terrorist network and threatened to blow up an Alitalia flight. On the flight from Bologna, Italy to Paris, Savorani brandished a TV remote control...

A Muslim man once suspected of planning to hijack a flight to England has said he was "stupid" to try to board a plane with a gun in his toiletry bag. Kerim Chatty, a Swede of Tunisian origin, sparked a security alert at Vasteras airport outside Stockholm in August when the weapon was found as he headed for a London-bound plane with 189 people on board. He was originally held on suspicion of planning to hijack the plane but the investigation was dropped for lack of evidence. On Friday, Chatty, 29, pleaded guilty in court to two counts of illegal...

Alitalia Hijacker Arrested - Italy TV says

'Hijacker confessed under threat of castration' By Justin Huggler in Jerusalem 27 November 2002 The Arab-Israeli citizen accused of attempting to hijack an aircraft and fly it into a building said yesterday he never tried to seize the controls. Tawfiq Fukrasaid he only "confessed" when Turkish police threatened to castrate him. Mr Fukra, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, is being held in a Turkish prison after being accused of trying to hijack an El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul on 17 November. El Al portrayed the incident as proof of the efficiency of its security. Mr Fukra was...

An Arab with Israeli citizenship attempted to hijack an El Al airliner last night, planning to ram the plane into a Tel Aviv building. He was tackled to the ground by two plainclothes security guards while trying to storm the plane's cockpit, and the 170 passengers aboard flight #581 from Tel Aviv landed safely at their destination - Istanbul, Turkey. The alleged would-be hijacker is Tawfik Fukara, 23, of a Galilee village 15 kilometers west of Tiberias. An investigation is underway to determine how Fukara managed to board the plane with the small knife with which he may have threatened...

<p>ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Prosecutors revealed Tuesday that a telephone number found at a crash site linked terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui to a Sept. 11 attacker, a disclosure that ranged beyond the indirect allegations in an indictment.</p> <p>Moussaoui had called a number found scrawled on a business card that belonged to Ziad Jarrah, a hijacker on United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pa., after passengers fought with hijackers, the government said.</p>

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A Swedish man of Tunisian origin, arrested on suspicion he was about to hijack a plane, was planning to crash the aircraft into a U.S. embassy in Europe, Swedish intelligence sources said on Saturday. Police are looking for four more men, including an explosives expert, who worked with him on the plan, the sources said. "We know for sure that the plan was to crash the plane into a U.S. embassy in Europe," a military intelligence source told Reuters. The man, 29, was arrested on Thursday -- almost a year after the September 11 hijack attacks on...

A man arrested in Sweden on suspicion he was about to hijack a plane, was planning to crash the aircraft into a US embassy in Europe, according to a Reuters report. Swedish intelligence sources told the news agency that the 29-year-old Swedish man may have been working with others on the plan. Police are looking for four more men, including an explosives expert. A military intelligence source told Reuters: "We know for sure that the plan was to crash the plane into a US embassy in Europe." The suspected would-be hijacker is still being questioned in Sweden after trying to...

<p>The CIA suspected Ziad Jarrah had been in Afghanistan and wanted him questioned because of "his suspected involvement in terrorist activities," UAE sources said.</p> <p>The FBI believes Jarrah, a Lebanese national, was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania shortly after 10 a.m. on September 11. U.S. officials believe the plane's target was the White House.</p>

BERLIN- A Syrian-born businessman who knew Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and has been accused of operating an al-Qaida front lashed out at President Bush on Thursday and denied any connection to terrorism. Mamoun Darkazanli, described by the FBI as a well-connected agent of Osama bin Laden, was questioned by German police shortly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But he was freed for lack of evidence and continues to live in Hamburg, Germany, where Atta and two other hijackers had lived. Speaking to The Associated Press in a telephone interview, Darkazanli bristled when...