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by Neil MacFarquahar
New York Times -
Sept. 21, 2001, pg. B8
CAIRO, Sept. 20 —
Many of the 19 hijacking suspects in the terror attacks last week remain
shrouded in confusion, with almost nothing known about some and up to
five apparent cases of mistaken identity.
The F.B.I. list of
hijacking suspects does include the names of at least six missing
Saudi Arabian men who left their country, ostensibly to join the Islamic
fighters battling the Russians in Chechnya, plus four others whose
parents have lost contact with them.
But the lack of the
details about the suspects, plus the assertions of mistaken identity,
have left their parents refusing to mourn and Saudi Arabian officials
dismissive of the entire list.
"The haste in
publishing the names of suspects in the attacks has made the media fall
into the error of involving innocent people, especially Saudis," Prince
Mit'eb bin Abdullah, the deputy commander of the Saudi National Guard,
complained to reporters in Riyadh.
The use of wrong
names and pictures may indicate that the hijackers filched the
identities of fellow Saudis.
In the United
States, Robert Mueller, the director of the F.B.I., acknowledged
Thursday that there were questions about the identities of several of
the hijackers on the list.
"We have several
hijackers whose identities were those of the names on the manifest, we
have several others who are still in question," Mr. Mueller said while
touring the crash site in Pennsylvania of one hijacked plane.
An official at the
Saudi Embassy in Washington said there were five mistaken identities on
the list, adding that all the men were alive and living abroad.
Saudi officials say
part of the problem stems from the proliferation of similar names in
Saudi Arabia, as well as the numerous varieties of spelling them in
English.
One of the most
common surnames on the F.B.I. list is Alshehri. But in English various
members of the clan might spell it Alshahri or Alshehiri or Al-Shehri,
entangling search efforts.
Far more difficult
is the fact that the country's huge tribes repeat the same names over
and over again.
Saudis use at least
three names: their given name, their father's name, and their tribal
name. Between the father's name and the tribal name, many also insert
the name of a fourth, favored ancestor. But even brothers do not always
choose the same name.
To narrow the search
to specific individuals, Saudi officials said they needed at least one
and preferably two middle names. What they are given to work with now is
a lot of Joe Smiths.
For example, there
might be thousands and thousands of people with the name Waleed Alshehri,
one of the men whose name appears on the list of suspects who rammed the
first plane into the World Trade Center.
For a while,
suspicion focused on the son of Saudi diplomat with that name who had
studied at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, but his
father said he was alive and working as a pilot for Saudi Arabian
Airlines. The confusion apparently stems from the fact that the F.B.I.
is matching the names on the passenger manifests to students who have
trained in flying.
In the southern
Saudi town of Khamis Mushait, however, there is an established
businessman named Mohammed Al-Shehri who is missing 2 of his 11 sons.
One of them is Waleed Mohammed Al-Shehri.
Mr. Waleed, 21, was
studying to be a teacher, while his brother Wail, 26, already had a
degree in physical education and was teaching, their father told the
Saudi newspaper Al-Watan The older brother was suffering from
psychological problems and kept seeking the help of clerics to perform a
kind of religious exorcism to cure him, the father said.
Both men disappeared
in December while on a trip to seek yet more help and have not been
heard from since. They had grown increasingly religious before their
disappearance and spoke often about joining the fight in Chechnya,
the paper quoted family friends as saying. Their pictures match those
released by the F.B.I.
To try to eliminate
confusion, Saudi officials said they had repeatedly asked for more
information on the suspects, especially longer names, but they had yet
to receive it. Plus, in a few cases it appears the hijackers resorted to
outright deception.
A passenger using
the name Abdel Azia Al-Omari and the birth date of December 24, 1972, is
listed on the manifest of the flight that hit the towers first. But a
man with the same name and birth date turned up alive in Riyadh, where
he told the Al Sharq Al Awsat daily that he had studied electrical
engineering at University of Denver. His passport was stolen there in
1995.
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