Marwan al-Shehhi
|
This photograph of Marwan al-Shehhi was released by the FBI in the days following the attack. |
Marwan Yousef al-Shehhi (
Arabic: مروان الشØÙŠ, also
transliterated Alshehhi)
(9 May 1978â€"11 September 2001) was named by the
FBI as the suicide pilot aboard
United Airlines flight 175 which crashed into the second World Trade Center tower on
September 11 2001. He trained at the
Huffman Aviation pilot school with
Mohammed Atta. Used aliases
Marwan Yusif Muhammad Rashid Al-Shehi,
Marwan Yusif Muhammad Rashid Lakrab Al-Shihhi, and
Abu Abdullah. At 23 years of age, he was youngest of the four terrorist pilots.
Al-Shehhi was born in
Ras al Khaimah, in the
United Arab Emirates, to a Muslim cleric. Al-Shehhi was seen as a quiet and devout Muslim.
In
February,
1996, al-Shehhi enrolled in a language institute in
Bonn,
Germany. He boarded with a local family. It took two years for him to learn enough German before he enrolled in a university with a military scholarship. According to some reports, he received a Florida driver's license in 1997 [
1]. He spent several months in 1998 trying to pass a language exam in
Hamburg, but returned to Bonn after he failed. In Germany, all foreign students must be fluent in the
German language to graduate.
Al-Shehhi moved to Hamburg in
1999, and helped form the
Hamburg cell with
Mohammed Atta and
Ramzi Binalshibh. There, his views became more and more radical. They met three or four times a week to discuss anti-American feelings and plot possible attacks. When someone asked why he and Atta never laughed, Al-Shehhi retorted, "How can you laugh when people are dying in Palestine?" [
2] Al-Shehhi committed himself to fighting and dying for his beliefs.
In October of 1999 Marwan al-Shehhi was filmed at
Said Bahaji's wedding in Germany with other 9/11 hijackers including
Ziad Jarrah. [
3]
In late 1999, al-Shehhi, Atta, Ziad Jarrah, Said Bahaji, and
Ramzi Binalshibh decided to travel to
Chechnya to fight against the
Russians, but were convinced by
Khalid al-Masri and
Mohamedou Ould Slahi at the last minute to change their plans. They instead traveled to
Afghanistan to meet with Osama bin Laden and train for terrorist attacks. Immediately afterwards, Atta, al-Shehhi, and Jarrah reported their
passports stolen, possibly to erase travel visas to Afghanistan.
After their training, the hijackers began to attempt to hide their radicalism. Al-Shehhi shaved his beard and seemed to his old friends like he had become less religious. After the attacks, a librarian in Hamburg reported that al-Shehhi boasted to her "There will be thousands of dead. You will think of me ... You will see, in America something is going to happen. There will be many people killed." [
4][
5][
6]
al-Shehhi returned to Germany in March, 2000, and began to learn to fly a jet.
Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, one of the most important 9/11 financial organizers, bought a
Boeing 747 flight simulator program using al-Shehhi's credit card. Eventually they decided that German flight schools would not work for them, and they decided to train in the United States.
2000
|
Al-Shehhi an undated photograph |
Al-Shehhi was the first of the Hamburg group to leave for the United States. He arrived in
Newark, New Jersey on
May 29,
2000.
Mohammed Atta joined him the next month, and the two began to search for flight schools. Al-Shehhi posed as a body guard of a "
Saudi Arabian royal family member" (really Atta) while the two of them took flying lessons in
Venice, Florida. They also logged hundreds of hours on a
Boeing 727 flight simulator. They received their licenses by December of 2000. Their expenses were paid for by
Ali Abdul Aziz Ali. On the 26th or 27th, Atta and Marwan abandoned a
Piper Cherokee that had stalled on the runway of
Miami International Airport. On the 29th, Atta and Marwan went to the Opa-Locka Airport and practised on a
Boeing 727 simulator.
2001
Al-Shehhi travelled to
Morocco to reassure his family that he was well, and then returned to the U.S. He and Atta visited
Virginia and
Georgia for unknown reasons, and then returned to Florida. They moved into an apartment together. Al-Shehhi traveled to
Cairo, Egypt on
April 18,
2001, and met with Atta's father to get Atta's international driver's license. He returned on
May 2. He began to take "surveillance flights" in the summer, watching the operations of flight crews and making final preparations.
In mid July 2001, some of the hijackers and members of the Hamburg cell gathered near
Salou,
Spain, for a period of a few days up to a couple of weeks. Since hotel records are sparse during some of that time, it is thought that they may have spent considerable time in and around safe houses related to the al-Qaeda leader in Spain,
Imad Yarkas. After 9/11, Spanish investigators followed the trails backwards, and the events they uncovered were chronicled in the Spanish nationwide newspaper
El PaÃs. Witnesses told Spanish investigators they saw a man who resembled Al-Shehhi on
July 17,
2001 at the
Universal Studios Port Aventura theme park next to Salou, Spain. The visitor, who was accompanied by two men, inquired about rides at the customer service counter. Witnesses indicated these companions resembled Ziad Jarrah, the later pilot on
United Airlines Flight 93, and Said Bahaji, a then 26-year-old German-Moroccan member of the al-Qaida cell in Hamburg. Back in Germany, it had been Bahaji's 1999 wedding during which Al-Shehhi was filmed. Other witnesses elsewhere had pointed out Bahaji from photos, as one of the men they saw in Spain. But Bahaji also bore a resemblance in appearance to
Mohamed Atta, who was traced to the same areas in Spain through his hotel and travel records.
On August 23rd,
Israeli
Mossad reportedly gives his name to the
CIA as part of a list of 19 names they say are planning an attack in the near future. Only four of the names are known for certain - Nawaf, Atta, Marwan and al-Mihdhar. [
7][
8]
|
Marwan's motel registration |
On August 26th, Marwan signs into the
Panther Motel in
Deerfield Beach, Florida, paying $500 cash saying he wants to stay until the 2nd, and listing a
Mailboxes Etc. as his permanant address. His register entry indicates that he is driving a blue
Chevrolet, assumed to be the one rented by Atta two weeks prior, and manager Richard Surma said that he bent rules to allow Marwan to have another man as an overnight guest. On August 28th Marwan went to the
Miami International Airport, where he purchased his ticket for
Flight 175, accompanied by an unknown man .[
9] On September 9th, the motel manager cleaning the room al-Shehhi had vacated finds a bag containing a German/English dictionary, a
protractor, flight manuals and local airport listings. Another employee later reported finding a
box cutter.
According to librarian Kathleen Hensmen,
Wail al-Shehri and
Waleed al-Shehri used Internet access at
Delray Beach Public Library in
August, 2001, where they may have been looking at information on
crop dusting; they reportedly left the library with a third middle-eastern man thought to be Marwan al-Shehhi, whom Hensmen claims asked her for the name of a local restaurant.
Staff at
Shuckum's Oyster Bar claimed they recognized both Atta and Marwan as two of the gentlemen who had been at the restaurant on either September 7th or 8th. While there are varying stories about Atta's activities, all sources indicate that al-Shehhi drank
rum and cokes while talking to the others.
On
September 10,
2001, al-Shehhi was one of four hijackers (Marwan, Banihammad, Mohand, and al-Suqami) sharing a room at the
Milner Hotel in
Boston, Massachusetts, where one of them called around for prostitutes, but eventually nixed the idea, possibly based on finances.
According to the
9/11 Commission Report, al-Shehhi called
Mohammed Atta at 6:45am on September 11th, after parking the rented Mitsubishi. This is thought to have been a final confirmation that the plans were intact.
He boarded flight 175 around 7:25. About a half an hour into the flight, the plane was hijacked. Al-Shehhi is believed to have taken control of the plane and directed it to
New York City. The plane flew into the south tower of
World Trade Center in a coordinated attack that killed thousands of people.
After the attacks, it is reported that Marwan got in an argument with an unnamed person over a parking spot at the airport. A lack of detail makes the story suspicious.[
10]
Late in 2005, Army
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Congressman
Curt Weldon alleged that the Defense Department data mining project
Able Danger had kept Marwan,
Khalid al-Mihdhar,
Nawaf al-Hazmi and
Mohamed Atta all under surveillance as
Al-Qaeda agents.3
*
May 29,
2000: Al-Shehhi enters the United States.
*
June 19,
2000: Al-Shehhi and Atta stay at short-term rental in New York City.
*
July 2,
2000: Al-Shehhi and Atta visit the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma.
*July,
2000: Al-Shehhi and Atta move to Venice, Florida and take pilot training classes at Huffman Aviation from July to December.
*
December 21,
2000: Al-Shehhi and Atta get their pilot licenses.
*
December 26 or
December 27 ,
2000: Al-Shehhi and Atta abandon a small plane that stalled on a runway at
Miami International Airport.
*
December 29 -
December 30 ,
2000: Al-Shehhi and Atta train on a Boeing 727 simulator at Op-Locka Airport near Miami, Florida.
*
January 25,
2001: Al-Shehhi and Atta in Norcross and Decatur, Georgia.
*February
2001: Al-Shehhi and Atta rent a single-engine plane from a Gwinnett County, Georgia flight school.
*
February 19,
2001: Al-Shehhi and Atta rent a mail box in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
*
April 11,
2001: Al-Shehhi and Atta lease an apartment in Coral Springs, Florida.
*
May 13 -
June 13,
2001: Al-Shehhi and Atta live on Jackson Street in Hollywood, Florida.
*
May 24,
2001: Al-Shehhi arrives in Las Vegas on a commercial flight, rents a car, and stays three nights in two hotels.[
11]
*Mid-June
2001: Al-Shehhi and Atta move into Tarra Gardens condo in Coral Springs, Florida.
*
August 15-
August 19,
2001: Al-Shehhi and Atta rent a car in Pompano Beach, Florida and return it with almost 3,000 miles logged.
*
September 7,
2001: Al-Shehhi and Atta stay at a Holiday Inn close to
Sarasota,
Florida where President Gerorge Bush plans to visit an elementary school on
September 11.
*
September 9,
2001: Al-Shehhi returns a car previously rented by Atta to WARRICK RENT-A-CAR, Pompano Beach, Florida, and asks the charge be removed from Atta's credit card and placed on his.
Sources
* Paul Thompson,
The Terror Timeline (ReganBooks,2004) ISBN 0060783389
*
The 9/11 Commission Report, (W.W. Norton & Company) ISBN 0393326713
*
The Final 9/11 Commission Report*
PHOTOS + Info- all hijackersImage:Marwansflightrecord.jpg|Shehhi's record from Huffman
