Free Republic

MEXICO CITY -- A 44-year-old Bolivian drug addict and alcoholic who describes himself as a church minister was the sole person responsible for the brief hijacking Wednesday of a commercial jetliner, a Mexican official said. The suspect -- Josmar Flores Pereira -- told authorities he hijacked the Boeing 737 jet because the date -- September 9, 2009, or 9/9/9, and 666 reversed -- held some significance for him, said Genaro Garcia Luna, the secretary for public safety. "He said that because of that divine reference he wanted to alert Mexico City of an earthquake," Garcia told reporters. Flanked by two...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House. Moussaoui's testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom as he disclosed details he had never revealed before. It was in stark contrast to Moussaoui's previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions. Moussaoui testified Monday he lied to investigators when arrested...

Shane Murphy...lashed out at Rush Limbaugh for the talk show host’s racial characterization in discussing the rescue of the ship’s captain by the Navy. Murphy, who returned to his Seekonk, Mass., home Friday, called Limbaugh a purveyor of “hate speech.”In commenting on the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips by the Navy Seals who shot and killed the three Somali pirates who were holding him captive, Limbaugh generated controversy when he called the pirates “black teenagers.”And they were…black teenagers.

WASHINGTON — Former Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Friday said he believed some of the 9/11 hijackers entered the United States from Canada, triggering a new round of frustration and anger among Canadian government officials only days after a similar remark by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. McCain, an Arizona senator who has championed free trade ties with Canada, told Fox News Napolitano was accurate when she suggested the terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington crossed into the U.S. across the Canadian border. "Well, some of the 9/11 hijackers did come...

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., makes the dubious claim that Sept. 11 hijackers entered the United States through Canada -- just days after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano came under fire for saying the same thing. What's up with Arizona politicians? Arizona Sen. John McCain made the dubious claim Friday that Sept. 11 hijackers entered the United States through Canada -- just days after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona, said the same thing. Napolitano retracted her claim on Thursday after Canadian officials chided her for the remark, calling it an unfortunate misconception. Napolitano admitted Thursday that...

Court Victory For Gilchrist “It was long overdue and warmly welcomed” was the quote made by Jim Gilchrist upon receiving the news, “the hijacker’s case they had fraudulently filed in the name of the Minuteman Project was thrown out of court; on none other, than, Friday the 13th!” There is no doubt Marvin Stewart, Debbie Courtney and Paul Sielski had a very bad Friday the 13th, when they learned Judge Wilkinson threw them out on their ear. Not only that, but once again, Courtney was slammed with a big fat court fine! The sanction was over $ 1,000.00, which is...

Saudi Arabia foiled a 2003 terror plot by militants who planned to hijack a plane and blow it up over a densely populated American city, a Saudi official said Sunday. The official said the plan, first reported Sunday in government-guided Al-Watan newspaper, was for the attackers to transit through the U.S. to another destination so they could avoid applying for hard-to-get American visas required for Saudis. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the militants were preparing to execute the alleged plot when it was halted.

TRIPOLI, Libya - Hijackers in Sudan's wartorn Darfur region seized a jetliner carrying nearly 100 people, including local Darfur officials, and forced it to land at a World War II-era airfield in the heart of the Sahara Desert in neighboring Libya, officials said. A Libyan official at the remote Kufra airport said there were 10 hijackers belonging to a Darfur rebel group and were demanding enough fuel for the Boeing 737 to continue to France. -snip-

Folks, we have a national disaster brewing over the 9-11 Flight 93 memorial. Years ago an uproar ensued over the plan to memorialize those who died on Flight 93, considered the first battle on the War on Terror which Americans won, under the Islamic symbol of the crescent. I am not against Islam in general, and I am not of the opinion that vast Muslim community is ready for war with the rest of the world. But Islamic extremists are responsible for 9-11 and many other attacks on the West before and after 9-11, so we must make sure that...

The U.S. military confirmed yesterday that it was holding an Afghan reporter, Jawad Ahmad [pictured right], because of his extensive ties to the Taliban. Jawad was a stringer for Canadian Television (CTV). Apparently his cell phone had Taliban phone numbers on them and indicated that the journalist had done extensive interviews with them. He also was in possession of Taliban propaganda videos. Have we just met the Afghani Bilal Hussein? Reporters Without Borders, of course, is outraged that a journalist--a journalist!--is being detained. After all, aren't all journalist--journalists!--immune from any and all suspicion? To be honest, this may be one...

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) -- Self-proclaimed al-Qaida members hijacked a Turkish airliner on its way from Northern Cyprus to Istanbul on Saturday, the private television station NTV reported. The hijackers demanded that the airplane be flown to Tehran, Iran, said Tuncay Doganer, CEO of the private Atlasjet airline company. But the plane landed at an airport in Antalya, a Turkish province on the Mediterranean coast, after pilots said there was not enough fuel to fly to Iran, Doganer said. There were 136 passengers and six crew on board the plane, Doganer said. He said some of the passengers had been released....

HAMBURG, Germany (AP) -- A Moroccan convicted as an accessory to murder in the September 11, 2001 attacks made an emotional declaration of innocence as a court opened hearings Friday to set his sentence. Judges could sentence Mounir el-Motassadeq, a friend of three of the suicide pilots, to as long as 15 years in prison in the latest chapter of a tangled, five-year legal saga. In November, a federal appeals court ruled that judges in Hamburg wrongly acquitted el Motassadeq in 2005 of direct involvement in the attacks, even as they sentenced him to seven years in prison for belonging...

More than 18 months before they carried out the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, a new videotape shows two of the Sept. 11 hijackers laughing and smiling for a camera. Mohamed Atta and Ziad Jarrah look much different in the tape than they do in photographs made famous after the attacks in New York and Washington. Both seem younger, are bearded, and the infamously bleak gaze of Atta, the ringleader, is replaced by a somewhat softer expression. Osama bin Laden also appears on the tape, speaking to a large group of people in January 2000. The Sunday Times, which...

Every time you see a documentary or film about 9/11, the mind drifts to the fantasy of -- What if we nabbed them? What if, as Mohammed Atta is going though security in the Logon airport wearing that blue shirt, he is stopped by someone who has been following the whole plot, who says, "Got ya, bud. Plot's over. Your virgins are going to have to wait." Today, right before our eyes, we stopped 9/11. Thousands of simple, average Britons and Americans were going to visit grandma or see a friend get married. Some were doing their jobs, just another...

UAE firm to run 6 U.S. ports Nation tied to 9/11 hijackers could influence terminals, including Baltimore's Originally published February 12, 2006 WASHINGTON // A company in the United Arab Emirates is poised to take over significant operations at six American ports, including Baltimore, as part of a corporate sale, leaving a country with ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers with influence over a maritime industry considered vulnerable to terrorism. The Bush administration considers the UAE an important ally in the fight against terrorism since the suicide hijackings and is not objecting to Dubai Ports World's purchase of London-based Peninsular...

DAMASCUS, Nov 15 (KUNA) -- A Gulf Air passenger plane took off to Manama safely from Damascus International Airport on Tuesday after the flight was delayed due to location of a gun in a bag, a Bahraini diplomatic source said. The source told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that the flight was delayed after the Syrian authorities detained seven Iraqi women who tried to board the plane with a gun concealed in one of their bags.Preliminary interrogations revealed that a man, who did not show up at the air facility, was expected to accompany them on the flight. The women and...

It's been four years of bad news for flight attendants. First, 9/11 happened. Then, they were laid off. With airline bankruptcies like Northwest's, they are being laid off again. Now, in another blow, the movie, "Flight Plan," is hitting theaters, tomorrow. Starring Jodie Foster, it's an outrageous piece of propaganda and incredible display of the irresponsible. I'm embarrassed to say that a very distant cousin of mine--Charles J.D. Schlissel--is executive producer of this outrage. The J.D. must stand for "Just Despicable." If you're a freedom-loving American like me, the rotten tricks of this movie will disgust you. If you want...

For the past couple of weeks the Discovery Channel has been advertising their documentary of Flight 93, the Flight That Fought Back. I couldn't watch it, I am just not ready to. I remember the phone ringing early in the morining. All my dad said was, "Turn on the TV." I had a feeling that the world was about to get bloody, but I can't say that I imagined that where we would be today. So much has changed since that day. Military terms are now commonly bantered about. Shock and Awe, IED, and RPG are now terms almost every...

Is this a memorial to the hijackers, or to the flight 93 victims? What kind of clueless idiot designed this? This is the chosen design for the Memorial for flight 93 that crashed into the Pennsyvania field on September 11, 2001. It was unveiled yesterday in Pennsylvania? What must the families of the victims think of this travesty? There were a couple of family members interviewed who liked it, but I don’t know if they truly realize the symbolism. A crescent is to a Muslim what a cross is to a Christian. This would be like putting a cross...

By Abigail R. Esman World Defense Review columnist "WE WILL NEVER FORGET!" declared the posters taped across the city, the banner strung above the massive hole that once had been the World Trade Center, in the months after 9/11. And for a year, anyway, tourists came to pay respects at Ground Zero while New Yorkers brought flowers to their local fire departments, contributed to funds benefiting the families of those killed, pasted American flags to the windshields of their cars, and somberly marked the eleventh day of every month that passed. But four years later, to walk the streets of...

This is a man who, undeniably, was called from a 1993 World Trade Center bombing safehouse, got a 9/11 hijacker through Malaysian customs, apparently attended a foundational 9/11 gathering, disappeared from sight (as did the hijackers and their co-conspirators) right after the Malaysia meeting, and turns up in Qatar a few days after 9/11 with contact information for the brother Khalid Sheik Mohammed (the 9/11 mastermind) and other terrorists. What is the good reason not to be curious about this apparent co-conspirator (whom the CIA once thought important enough to travel to Jordan to interview)? Why didn't the 9/11 Commission...

In September 2000, one year before the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11, a U.S. Army military intelligence program, known as “Able Danger,” identified a terrorist cell based in Brooklyn, NY, one of whose members was 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta, and recommended to their military superiors that the FBI be called in to “take out that cell,” according to Rep. Curt Weldon, a longtime Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who is currently vice chairman of both the House Homeland Security and House Armed Services Committees. The recommendation to bring down that New York City cell -- in which two other Al Qaeda...

WASHINGTON - The Sept. 11 commission will investigate a claim that U.S. defense intelligence officials identified ringleader Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers as a likely part of an al-Qaida cell more than a year before the hijackings but didn't forward the information to law enforcement. Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa. and vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, said Tuesday the men were identified in 1999 by a classified military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger." If true, that's an earlier link to al-Qaida than any previously disclosed intelligence about Atta. Sept....

U.S. Reiterates $5 Million Reward for Lebanese Hijackers of an American Jet in 1985By Zeina Karam Associated Press Writer Published: Jun 29, 2005 BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - The U.S. Embassy reiterated on Wednesday the government's offer of a $5 million reward for information on the whereabouts of Lebanese Shiites who hijacked an American TWA jetliner in 1985 and killed a Navy diver on board. The rewards have been around since after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S. But this was the first time the embassy in Beirut issued a reminder about them. Washington may be hoping more information...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Two Sept. 11 hijackers "should have drawn some scrutiny from the FBI," when they lived openly in San Diego in 2000, the Justice Department's inspector general concluded in a report that chronicles the bureau's failures to connect the dots leading up to the attacks. The head of the San Diego FBI office took issue Thursday with the inspector general's report, saying it "greatly exaggerates" the possibility that local agents could have prevented the attacks. The 368-page review found that the FBI missed opportunities to learn about the al-Qaida operatives when they lived in the San Diego...

THE Bush administration revealed today that some of the September 11, 2001, hijackers booked their tickets on the internet using a computer in a college library in New Jersey. The disclosure by Ken Wainstein, US attorney for the District of Columbia in testimony to the House of Representatives subcommittee on crime, terrorism and homeland security, was intended to bolster the government's argument that Congress should renew a law allowing it to seize library and bookstore records. "Investigators tracing the activities of the hijackers determined that, on four occasions in August of 2001, individuals using internet accounts registered to Nawaf Al...

DUESSELDORF, Germany -- A Jordanian man who claims he was Osama bin Laden's bodyguard was questioned by U.S. officials who are considering having him testify at the Virginia trial of terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, the man's attorney said Thursday. Shadi Abdellah, 28, sentenced last November to four years in prison for helping plan terror attacks in Germany, was granted early release last month after serving more than half the time, including in pretrial custody. While in prison, he served as a government witness in several trials, including that of his alleged co-plotters in the German cell of the Tawhid and...

Fifteen minutes after KLM Flight 685 took off from Amsterdam for Mexico City on April 8, Mexican authorities forwarded the names of all the passengers to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The reason: the flight was scheduled to pass through U.S. airspace. by the time the Boeing 747 had finished its three-hour crossing of the Atlantic, Homeland Security screeners were on high alert. The names of two Saudi passengers aboard the KLM flight had begun producing "hits" on the screening center's lists of 70,000 suspect foreigners. The two Saudis, the database reported, were brothers and pilots who had attended...

Globalterroralert.com (4/14/05): Sources in the Arabian Peninsula are now claiming that one of the four Al-Qaida suicide bombers who attacked a U.S. base in the western Iraqi town of Al-Qaim on April 11 was Saudi national Hadi bin Mubarak al-Qahtani. According to a statement marking his death, Hadi had grown "eager to martyr himself" after witnessing the example of the "19 heroes" and their "holy attack that demolished the foolish infidel Americans and caused many young men to awaken from their deep sleep." Click to view English translation c/o Globalterroralert.com

(Feb. 24) - Uli Derickson, the Trans World Airlines flight attendant honored for saving passengers' lives in 1985 by both confronting and mollifying terrorist hijackers, died on Friday at her home in Tucson. She was 60. Courage in a Terrifying Moment Ms. Derickson was still working as a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines when she received a diagnosis of cancer in 2003, her son, Matthew Derickson, said in announcing her death. On June 14, 1985, when a pair of Lebanese gunmen commandeered a T.W.A. flight from Athens to Rome, Ms. Derickson took the lead in protecting the 152 passengers...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

HAMBURG - One of the 11 September 2001 suicide pilots, Marwan al-Shehhi, spoke in mid-1999 of causing "thousands of deaths" in the United States, a former librarian said on Wednesday at the Hamburg re-trial of a Morroccan student convicted for his part in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US. Mounir al-Motassadeq was jailed for 15 years for assisting 3,000 murders and being a member of a terrorist group, but appeal judges ordered a re-trial. The ex-librarian, whose name was withheld in accordance with German court reporting practice, told the court that she thought he mentioned the World Trade Center...

Ziad Jarrah,Mohammed Atta,& Marwan Alshehhi stayed in Jacksonville. Channel 12 has done a great job of investigative reporting with this. Sen Nelson says that the 9/11 commission knew nothing of this. You'll have to read the article, there is a video as well.

http://www.globalterroralert.com/amriki911.wmvhttp://www.globalterroralert.comGlobalterroralert.com (10/31/04): The voice of an alleged American Al-Qaida terrorist operative featured in a video broadcast last week has been matched to audio taken from a previous As-Sahab video production documenting the planning behind the September 11, 2001 suicide hijackings. During the latter video from November 2001, "Azzam al-Amriki" applauds the mission of the 9/11 hijackers to "destroy the economic fortresses" of America.

A little humor and the great Sinatra sound. Go here and listen to "Strangers on My Flight" http://www.beecy.net/frank/

This is a hilarious rendition of "Strangers in the Night" that you can't miss!

Two of the hijackers, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, had met Mukhabarat officers in the months before 9-11 in the United Arab Emirates. This provides another stunning indictment of Saddam Hussein and his Regime. How could one not conclude that Iraq had complicity in the 9/11 Attack given this information? According to U.S. and foreign intelligence officials, in the spring of 2000, Iraqi Intelligegence agents met with September 11th pilot hijackers Zaid Samir Jarrah and Marwin Al-Shehhi in Dubai, UAE in order to advance the hijacking of U.S. aircraft to commit terrorist acts. Not long after the meeting, Al-shehhi entered...

Legal Constraints on the FBI and “the Wall” The FBI had different tools for law enforcement and intelligence. For criminal matters, it could apply for and use traditional criminal warrants. For intelligence matters involving international terrorism, however, the rules were different. For many years the attorney general could authorize surveillance of foreign powers and agents of foreign powers without any court review, but in 1978 Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This law regulated intelligence collection directed at foreign powers and agents of foreign powers in the United States. In addition to requiring court review of proposed surveillance (and...

Another scheme revealed that Bin Ladin sought the capability to kill on a mass scale. His business aides received word that a Sudanese military officer who had been a member of the previous government cabinet was offering to sell weapons-grade uranium. After a number of contacts were made through intermediaries, the officer set the price at $1.5 million, which did not deter Bin Ladin. Al Qaeda representatives asked to inspect the uranium and were shown a cylinder about 3 feet long, and one thought he could pronounce it genuine. Al Qaeda apparently purchased the cylinder, then discovered it to be...

Terrorists testing jets, crews sayBy Audrey HudsonTHE WASHINGTON TIMES Flight crews and air marshals say Middle Eastern men are staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting test runs aboard airplanes for a terrorist attack.     At least two midflight incidents have involved numerous men of Middle Eastern descent behaving in what one pilot called "stereotypical" behavior of an organized attempt to attack a plane. ---Snip--- A June 29 incident aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles is similar to a Feb. 15 incident on American Airlines Flight 1732 from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New York's John...

What Really Happened on Flight 327? By JOE SHARKEY Published: July 20, 2004 There is no doubt that something out of the ordinary happened on Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on June 29. The plane was met at the airport by squads of federal agents and police responding to radio messages from the pilots about concerns that 14 Middle Eastern male passengers had spent the four-hour flight acting suspiciously.

A Moroccan terror suspect held in Britain was part of the "commando group" who led the attack on September 11, a court has heard. Farid Hilali, 35, was a British link to the al Qaida terrorists who carried out Osama bin Laden's orders to attack the US, Bow Street magistrates' court heard. The court was also told of a wedding video of another of the commando group which included two of the suicide pilots on September 11. Hilali has been held since last September under immigration offences but Spain has issued a European arrest warrant to extradite him for terror...

Hijackers allowed to stay for fear of infringing their human rights By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor (Filed: 14/07/2004) Nine Afghan gunmen who hijacked an airliner four years ago and forced it to fly to London have been told they can stay in Britain with their wives and children. After a secret court hearing, immigration adjudicators refused them asylum but ruled that they could not be deported because their human rights would be infringed. David Davis, the shadow home secretary, described the ruling as "crazy" last night on the grounds that it sent the wrong signals to others tempted to...

You may have heard of this lately, or perhaps have had it happen to you. That's right...your internet browser gets hijacked. Taken from your control, as it were. It takes you to sites you would never have visited in a million years; your computer slows down and maybe crashes; your homepage is mysteriously changed; you now have about a dozen "favorites" that you never selected and don't want. You've been HIJACKED! What happened? How? You ask, as you pull your hair out in disgust. Well, it happened to me,, and some FReepers I know, and a LOT of my friends,...

Court Reinstates Charges Against Local 9/11 Figure; El Cajon Student Accused Of Lying About Ties To Hijackers SAN DIEGO -- A federal appeals court Friday reinstated charges against a Jordanian college student accused of lying about his associations with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court judge's ruling that had dismissed perjury charges against Osama Awadallah in April 2002. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin had ruled that the government's jailing of material witnesses for a grand jury investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was unconstitutional. Awadallah was among...

Recently translated documents captured by U.S. forces provide new evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Rosters of officers in Saddam's Fedayeen list Lt. Col. Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, who was present at the January 2000 al-Qaida "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9-11 attacks were planned, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Fedayeen was the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday, which was deployed to do much of the regime's dirty work. The U.S. has never been sure Shakir was at the Kuala...

Achille Lauro What happened during the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985? AP Photo Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, 1985 On October 7, 1985 four heavily armed terrorists representing the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, with some 100 mostly elderly passengers on board, in Egyptian waters. The hijackers demanded that Israel free 50 Palestinian prisoners, and to prove their determination, they shot and killed a disabled American tourist, 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, and threw his body overboard with his wheelchair. After a two-day drama, the Egyptian government, unaware that Klinghoffer...

2 Middle Eastern men detained FBI: Duo bought plane tickets, but gave false phone numbers BY LENNY SAVINO Herald Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Two Middle Eastern men who paid cash for one-way airline tickets from New York to Amsterdam and apparently gave false phone numbers to a New York City travel agency were being questioned Monday by the FBI, the agency said. The men bought tickets for Friday night's Delta Air Lines Flight 80, scheduled to leave John F. Kennedy International Airport at 8:15 p.m. They were detained before boarding the flight, which was canceled. The FBI would not ...

Bolivia Detains 16 Muslims on Terror Tipoff -Agency Thu December 4, 2003 09:08 PM ET LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivia's state news agency said authorities in La Paz detained 16 Muslims on Thursday after a tip-off from French police that some of them were planning to hijack a plane and attack targets in the United States. No independent confirmation was immediately available of the report from the ABI agency, which is regarded as a mouthpiece of the Bolivian government. It quoted Interior Minister Alfonso Ferrufino as saying most of those arrested were Bangladeshis and that they were detained at...

The discovery of a mysterious stash of shoes with makeshift insoles in a bathroom ceiling at the Days Hotel in Brighton yesterday has raised enough eyebrows to draw the attention of the FBI, state and local police. ``We have been notified and are responding,'' said FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz.Three hotel workers who removed the insoles in the basement of the Soldiers Field Road hotel were overcome with noxious fumes and experienced minor respiratory problems about 12:30 p.m., police said. The workers, along with a Boston police officer called to the scene, were treated and released from St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Boston...