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Two Brothers among Hijackers: CNN Report
Investigators have leads on four hijackers they
believe commandeered the two airliners from Boston that destroyed the
twin towers of the World Trade Center, CNN has learned.
Two of the men were brothers, apparently from Saudi Arabia, who had most recently been living in Florida and attended flight training school there.
In another development, law enforcement sources said the United States
intercepted two phone calls after the Tuesday attacks between members
of al Qaeda, the terrorist network sponsored by suspected terrorist
Osama bin Laden. In those conversations, the individuals discussed
hitting two targets, the sources said.
Police and law enforcement sources said the two brothers
suspected in the Boston hijackings were Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Abbas
Bukhari, who up until recent days had lived in Vero Beach, Florida. Both
of their homes have been searched, the sources said.
The two rented a car, a silver-blue Nissan Altima, from an Alamo
car rental at Boston's Logan Airport and drove to an airport in
Portland, Maine, where they got on US Airways Flight 5930 at 6 a.m.
Tuesday headed back to Boston, the sources said.
Investigators are analyzing videotapes at the car rental facility and at the Maine airport.
Before CNN learned the identities of the two brothers, Portland
Police Chief Mike Chitwood said, "I can tell you those two individuals
did get on a plane and fly to Boston early yesterday morning ... I can
tell you that they are the focus of a federal investigation."
Law enforcement sources said investigators searched for
documents pertaining to the Bukharis and other students at Flight Safety
International, a Vero Beach aviation school.
The landlord of Adnan Bukhari said Bukhari and another man who
lived next door described themselves as Saudi pilots and lived with
their wives and children. The landlord, Paul Stimeling, said the wife
and the children of the next-door neighbor of Adnan Bukhari moved out
over the weekend. The Bukhari family, the landlord said, moved out at
the end of August.
Law enforcement sources said the FBI is seeking to question the family members as material witnesses.
FBI investigators also obtained the records of student pilots
from other flight training schools in the area, including Embry-Riddle
University and Huffman Aviation International.
Charles Voss, a bookkeeper for Huffman in Coral Springs,
Florida, said agents interviewed him and confirmed he briefly allowed
two students from the flight school to stay at his house. Those men were
Mohammed Atta and Marwan Yousef Alshehhi, who law enforcement sources
say carried United Arab Emirates passports.
A Florida driver's license was issued to Atta on May 2, 2001, and he previously held an Egyptian driver's license.
A Mitsubishi sedan impounded at Logan Airport was rented by
Atta, sources said. The car contained materials, including flight
manuals, written in Arabic that law enforcement sources called "helpful"
to the investigation.
An apartment linked to Atta has been searched in Coral Springs.
Investigators also said they are checking the phone records of
each of the addresses searched. They are also attempting to obtain
fingerprint and DNA samples, sources said.
Police also issued a lookout alert for two cars -- a 1989
two-door red Pontiac with license plate D79-DDV or DVD and a four-door
Oldsmobile with the license plate VEP-54N. A vehicle registration record
obtained by CNN show that the Pontiac was registered to Atta.
The FBI on Wednesday took several people into custody in Boston
and in Florida for questioning in connection with the investigation into
the deadly terrorist attacks against the United States.
The individuals have not been arrested and they have not been
described as suspects, but authorities said they could provide
"important material information" related to the attacks.
Said one source: "They are talking."
But FBI Director Robert Mueller said: "There have been no
arrests relating to these hijackings." He said authorities had
identified "many of the hijackers" on the four planes that crashed
Tuesday and were seeking "any of their associates remaining in the
United States."
The investigation, involving hundreds of agents and numerous law
enforcement agencies, played out on several fronts and across the globe
as the hunt for the culprits intensified. The investigation included a
search in Germany.
Initial signs pointed to the hijackers -- dead with their thousands of victims -- having ties to the Middle East.
The day was chock full of sightings of suspicious individuals
and hundreds of tips pouring into the FBI. Some tips turned cold
quickly, including the detainment of an Amtrak train in Providence,
Rhode Island, for the questioning of three men, who authorities later
said were not connected to the attacks.
Separately, heavily armed police and FBI agents swarmed the Westin Hotel in the Copley Square area of Boston.
As part of the investigation, authorities are checking passenger
manifests from the crashed airplanes to see if they include anyone who
attended flight schools in the United States or who used facilities that
have airline simulators.
After an initial review of those manifests, investigators are
looking at several people, including at least one with suspected links
to bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi exile living in Afghanistan who is the accused mastermind of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
Authorities, sources said, believe three to five hijackers were
on board each of the four planes that crashed Tuesday. Two jets slammed
into the towers of New York's World Trade Center, one hit the Pentagon,
and the fourth crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
The search had an international angle as well. In Hamburg,
Germany, the BKA, the federal criminal agency, searched one apartment at
the request of the FBI, a police spokesman said. He said agents found
that one of the apartments has been empty since February and the
resident of the other did not match the name given by the FBI, so the
second apartment was not searched.
Agents are taking evidence samples from the apartments, the spokesman said.
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