WASHINGTON, 17 September — They were middle class, well educated men, often fathers, in their mid 20s and older, who entered the United States for the most part legally — not young, poor religious fanatics who had nothing to lose.
As details emerged from the investigation into Tuesday’s horror, US security forces were forced to change the focus of their search. Media reports yesterday said that investigators suspect there could be a total of 35 terror cells still working within the United States, raising concern of new terrorist attacks.
At least one, Muhammad Atta, who helped hijack American Airlines Flight 11 that hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, had a degree from the Technical University in Hamburg, Germany.
Marwan Al-Shehhi, on United Airlines Flight 175 that hit the south tower, was in the US on a tourist visa. His colleague in terror on that flight, Mohaid Al-Shehri, entered on a B-2 work visa.
Some received flight training in Florida, including several hours on Boeing passenger plane simulators, preparing to pilot the passenger missiles of death into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington.
In spy language, their profiles appeared to be ones of “sleepers”, ordinary-looking people who are spies or worse. They settled in Florida, California, Arizona, over the period of the last five years, causing barely a raised eyebrow, investigators have said.
One suspect, Abdulaziz Alomari, who later boarded the flight with Atta, lived in Vero Beach, Fla., with his wife and four children. On Labor Day, Sept. 3, the family threw a party before moving back home, serving pizza and hamburgers to all the kids in the neighborhood, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
“People who have a lot of other reasons to live for are deciding that this is such an important cause that they’re willing to die anyway,” Andrea Talentino, a political science professor at Tulane University, was quoted as saying by the New York Times on Saturday. “That, obviously, is very frightening.”
The global nature and sophistication of the suicide hijacker suspects, combined with their near invisibility and destructive motivation, appeared to make the search especially difficult. Atta left a suicide note in luggage at the Boston airport that said he wanted to go to heaven as a martyr, and was killing himself, the Washington Post reported. Egyptian security officials said Atta was Egyptian.
Authorities said they had gleaned the identities of most of the hijackers and had gathered several promising leads by investigating passenger manifests from the doomed planes and combing over rental car receipts, security videotapes and other records. Federal Bureau of Investigations chief Robert Mueller said he had assigned 4,000 special agents to the case and 3,000 support personnel in possibly the biggest US investigation ever undertaken.
To date, two material witnesses have been arrested in the US. The investigation has also led to Germany, Switzerland, France, and elsewhere. Many countries are cooperating in the search.
Police in Macau yesterday detained five Pakistanis on suspicion of links to the air assaults in the United States, Lusa news agency reported in Lisbon. The report quoted a spokesman for the Macau government as confirming the detention and nationalities of the five men, saying the operation had been mounted on a tip-off from abroad.
