'I'm No Hijacker, I'm an STC Electrical Engineer'

FBI's hijacker is alive and well in Saudi Arabia

The Saudi Gazette 
September 19, 2001
(reprint of an Asharq Al-Awsat story)



RIYADH (ASHARQ AL-AWSAT) -- One of the 19 men identified by US investigators as having taken part in last week's suicide attacks in New York and Washington is alive in Saudi Arabia.

Abdelaziz Al-Omari told the London-published Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat that he was at work with the Saudi Telecommunication Company (STC) in Riyadh when New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington were hit by hijacked airliners, September 11. He said that his original passport had been stolen in Denver, Colorado, in 1995.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Omari, whose date of birth was given as December 24, 1972 or May 28, 1979, was thought to be one of the pilots that took over the American Airlines Boeing 767 that slammed into the World Trade Center's North Tower.

Asharq Al-Awsat published a picture of the "real" Omari, who said he was born December 24, 1972, reading the newspaper's September 12 edition.

"I am an electrical engineer and I have no idea how to fly a plane," he was quoted as saying.

Asharq Al-Awsat said Omari's passport and other personal documents were stolen from his apartment in 1995, two years after he arrived in Denver to study electrical engineering at the University of Denver.

Omari informed the police of the theft and returned to Saudi Arabia at the end of 1995 on a travel document supplied by his country's embassy in Washington, the paper said.

He went back to the US at the end of 1996 on a new passport and finished his studies in April last year.

 

© Copyright 2001

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