Satam al-Suqami
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Satam_al-Suqami.jpg
Satam M. A. al-Suqami (Arabic: سطام السقامي, also transliterated Alsuqami) (June 28, 1976 - September 11, 2001) was named by the FBI as a hijacker of American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles that crashed into the World Trade Center as part of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Suqami was the only hijacker not to obtain a U.S. identification document.
Almost nothing of al-Suqami's history is known. The 9/11 Commission Report says that al-Suqami was from Riyadh, and trained for al-Qaida at Khaldan, a large training facility near Kabul, Afghanistan. In November of 2000, al-Suqami flew into Iran from Bahrain with fellow-hijacker Majed Moqed.
The FBI says al-Suqami first arrived in the U.S. on April 23, 2001; however, six unconnected people reported seeing al-Suqami with fellow-hijacker Salem al-Hazmi in San Antonio, Texas earlier in 2001. This has not been confirmed. It is unknown where al-Suqami stayed after his arrival in April, although he may have stayed with Waleed al-Shehri in Hollywood, Florida.
Al-Suqami was called one of the "muscle" hijackers, who were not expected to act as pilots. CIA director George Tenet later said that they "probably were told little more than that they were headed for a suicide mission inside the United States."[1] (http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/cia061802.html) [2] (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/09/eveningnews/main525012.shtml)
On September 10, 2001, the night before the suicide attack, al-Suqami and several other hijackers called around for prostitutes, but declined to sleep with them or pay them because it was too expensive Although they were described as paying for drinks and their flying lessons with "unlimited funds".[3] (http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/bostonglobe101001.html)
On September 11, 2001, al-Suqami boarded American Airlines flight 11, hijacked it, and assisted Mohammed Atta in flying it into the north tower of the World Trade Center in an attack that killed thousands of people. It is suspected that al-Suqami killed passenger Daniel Lewin, the founder of Akamai Technologies and a former member of the Israeli military, for attempting to prevent the hijacking.
Four days after the attacks, the FBI claimed to have found al-Suqami's passport among the rubble of the World Trade Center. (This was mistakenly reported by many news outlets to be Mohammed Atta's passport.) Some news organizations openly doubted this report, questioning "the idea that [his] passport had escaped from that inferno unsinged".[4] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,669961,00.html) According to the 9/11 Commission, his passport had been doctored.
External link
- The Final 9/11 Commission Report (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/index.html)