I just sent you a PM. Regarding the Alshehri brothers, I may be wrong, but the more I look into these guys, the stranger it gets. For instance, you have the diplomat father claiming he has two sons Wail and Waleed, and his son Waleed is a pilot still training in Morocco, yet that Waleed is interviewed after 9/11 and says he has no brother named Wail. There's something really weird about it all.
As another example, the Waleed who wasn't the diplomat's son had no ability to speak English or any other language than Arabic, and was basically a country bumpkin who'd never left Saudi Arabia in his life until going to Florida in the summer of 2001. Whereas the Waleed seen by witnesses in Florida that summer speaks English and German quite fluently, and is even a big fan of baseball and the Florida Marlins specifically, and talks to his landlord at great length about that team. The official 9/11 story put forth by the 9/11 Commission has the country bumpkin being the one on the hijacked flight.
Here's the Palm Beach Post story, which is a good place to start, but it only scratches the surface. I hope I'm not violating copyright policy, as this article can't be found anywhere on the internet nowdays.
Mysterious Brothers Left a Confusing Trail
by Eliot Kleinberg and Clay Lambert
The Palm Beach Post
October 17, 2001
Housekeeper Valrie Williams didn't remember much about the mysterious men who holed up at the Homing Inn for a month and wouldn't even let maids clean without keeping an eye on them.
But she did instantly recognize two of the three when the FBI showed their photographs as part of a 19-man roster of presumed murderers.
Waleed and Wail Alshehri are on the list, identified as two of five men who commandeered American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston on Sept. 11, helping to slam the Boeing 767 into the north tower of the World Trade Center.
They might actually be two otherwise unidentified men who stole the identities of others, including a commercial pilot who is the son of a Saudi diplomat.
Then again, it may be that the diplomat's son has the misfortune of sharing a name that is about as common in the Middle East as Bill Smith is in America. If published reports from the Middle East are correct, Waleed and Wail Alshehri are brothers, restless young Saudi teachers who vanished in December, last seen headed to Chechnya to help Muslim separatists fighting Russia in that breakaway republic.
The truth might be buried, along with them, in the 60 feet of rubble in lower Manhattan that they helped create.
A common name
Muhammad Ali Asgley Alshehri, a well-known businessman in Khamis Mushayt, a city near the Yemen border in southern Saudi Arabia, says the suspects are his sons. He has not seen them. He told al-Watan, a Saudi newspaper, that they are two of 11 sons and one daughter. Muhammad Alshehri told the newspaper he hopes the investigation will prove that his sons were not involved. But al-Watan said they matched the pictures released by the FBI.
The father said Waleed, 21, had studied at a a teacher's college in nearby Abha, and Wail, 25, had a degree in business administration from the same school. He also said Wail had a degree in physical education.
And, he said, Wail was suffering from psychological problems and was seeking a kind of exorcism.
"He was mentally ill and had gone to numerous clerics for assistance in overcoming this instability," Muhammad Alshehri said. He said his son had asked the school where he taught for a six-month leave to make a pilgrimage to the holy Saudi Arabian city of Medina.
It is in that city that Wail Alshehri was last spotted, in December, the Los Angeles Times reported Sept. 26. The Guardian in London reported last month that a Middle Eastern intelligence agency had identified Wail al-Alshehri as having trained in Bin Laden's al-Farouq training camp. Officials have said they believe he received several months of training last year in hand-to-hand combat, bomb-making and poison-mixing at the camp in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Sources close to the family told al-Watan that both sons became very religious nine months before their disappearance and had spoken often of joining the Mujahedeen in Chechnya. They were hoping for martyrdom. Neither ever discussed politics nor Osama bin Laden. Neither man knew anything about flying and both spoke very limited English. The Alshehri brothers had driver's licenses from the United Arab Emirates and it is believed that they flew to the United States directly from that country.
Then there is Saudi pilot Waleed Alshehri.
The New York Post reported Sept. 15 that Alshehri is the son of a former second secretary of the Saudi embassy in Washington. The newspaper said a Waleed Alshehri had at least eight different birth dates and addresses in Florida and Vienna, Va., and the FBI has said Waleed M. Alshehri has used seven dates of birth, from 1974 to 1979.
On Sept. 16, Ahmed Alshehri, a Saudi diplomat based in Bombay, India, denied he was the father of Waleed Alshehri or had ever served in the United States, even though diplomatic lists showed his position at the Washington embassy. Five days later, wire services quoted Alshehri as telling the Saudi newspaper al-Medina that his son Waleed was alive and a pilot for Saudi Arabian airlines. The father reportedly complained that "many of those mentioned as suspects appeared to be still around and there was no truth in what was spread about them."
The same article quoted an Abdulaziz Alomari, an engineer with Saudi Telecom, as saying he lost his passport while studying in Denver. The FBI has said another of the hijackers of Flight 11 used that name.
On Sept. 20, al-Medina quoted Waleed Alshehri as saying he was out of Saudi Arabia for a training course and planned to sue CNN for slandering him. Other reports placed him in Morocco.
The Saudi embassy and Saudi Arabian Airlines did not respond to written requests by The Palm Beach Post for interviews with the Waleed Alshehri reported to be the Saudi pilot.
It may be that the pilot and the brothers simply had the same surname. The New York Times reported Sept. 20 from Cairo that Alshehri is an often-used name that, when transliterated from Arabic to the western alphabet, can also be spelled Alshahri, Alshehiri, Al-shehrhi or al-Shehri.
A Waleed Alshehri listed with a Daytona Beach address gave a date of birth of New Year's Day, 1976, and said he was 5-feet-10. Records show he lived there from at least 1995 to at least May 2000. Reports show that man failed to retrieve an $81.10 utility deposit on the Daytona Beach apartment dating to 1999.
FAA records show a Waleed Ahmed Al Shehri, with a Daytona Beach address, had both private and commercial pilot's licenses. Authorities at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach describe Waleed Alshehri, who graduated from the school, as an A and B student who lived in a nearby $580-a-month apartment.
Published reports and documents show a man by that name also lived at a boarding house in Vienna, Va., near Washington, from at least February to October 1999, and took computer classes with his father in nearby Tysons Corner, Va.
Whoever they were, the men authorities now identify as Waleed and Wail Alshehri left a hit-and-miss trail from the Middle East to Europe to Boynton Beach, and to the exterior wall of the World Trade Center. The summer of 2001 was a busy one for the men calling themselves Alshehris.
Watching over the maids
On June 21, Waleed Alshehri checked into room B-308 of the Homing Inn on a busy stretch of Federal Highway in Boynton Beach. He would check out on July 26. Wail Alshehri and hijack suspect Satam al-Suqami used the hotel's address for Florida driver licenses on July 3, and all three bought memberships at a World Gym in Boynton Beach.
The man who filled out the paperwork upon check-in at the Homing Inn provided a driver license listing his name as Waleed M. Al Shehri and gave an address that is the oceanfront Bimini Motel in Hollywood. The license gives a date of birth of Dec. 20, 1978, and lists him as 5-feet-6. The license was issued May 4. He would order a duplicate the very next day.
Williams, the housekeeper, told investigators she recognized Waleed Alshehri from his license photo, but said other Middle Eastern men who came and went from the room often hid their faces.
Williams noted something else strange: She was never allowed to clean the room alone. A tall, slim man always sat in the doorway. She did not recognize the man from the photos of the suspected hijackers. The owner said the men never used their telephone, although residents saw them on the pay phone.
While in Boynton Beach Waleed also might have bought a one-month membership at World Gym, just west of the city. And a librarian at the Delray Beach Public library remembered the Alshehri brothers as having used the Internet. A newspaper in Barcelona, Spain, reported the Alshehri brothers met there with Mohamed Atta, believed to be the leader of the Flight 11 cell.
The owner of the Panther Hotel in Deerfield Beach has said he recognized the brothers and Satam al-Suqami as staying there from Aug. 2 to Aug. 10.
Two weeks later, on Aug. 26, the brothers bought one-way tickets on Flight 11, using different Visa cards. They listed as their address a Mail Boxes Etc. in Hollywood.
Now all that remained was moving the money and getting into position for mayhem. On Sept. 8 and 9, Atta transferred thousands of dollars to a contact in the United Arab Emirates.
A day later, another suspected terrorist - Marwan Al-Shehhi - and someone spelling his name "Waleed Al-Shehri" checked into Room 432 of the Park Inn in the Boston suburb of Chestnut Hill. The Boston Herald reported that a driver for an escort service brought a woman in her 20s to the room used by Waleed and Wail Alshehri. The driver said the woman stayed for 20 minutes and was paid $180.
The next morning, investigators believe, the brothers Alshehri traveled 11 miles from the hotel to Boston's Logan International Airport and boarded a plane. Within an hour, that plane flew into the World Trade Center.
eliot_kleinberg@pbpost.com clay_lambert@pbpost.com NOTES:
Ran all editions.