Mohand al-Shehri
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| Mohand al-Shehri | |
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| Born | July 5, 1979 Asir, Saudi Arabia |
| Died | September 11, 2001 New York City, United States |
Mohand al-Shehri (Arabic: مهند الشهري; also transliterated Alshehri, and also known under the aliases Mohammed Alshehhi and Mohald Alshehri) (July 5, 1979 - September 11, 2001) was named by the FBI as one of the muscle hijackers aboard United Airlines flight 175 in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
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[edit] History
Born 1979, al-Shehri was one of five hijackers to come from the 'Asir province of Saudi Arabia, the others being Ahmed al-Nami, Abdulaziz al-Omari and Waleed and Wail al-Shehri, two brothers unrelated to Mohand.
Mohand was a student at Imam Muhammed Ibn Saud Islamic University in Abha, but his growing devotion to Wahhabiism took him on frequent trips to Al Qasim, and as a result he failed his final exams.
According to Arab News, al-Shehri went to fight in Chechnya in early 2000, where he may have met Hamza al-Ghamdi. On October 23, Mohand applied for a B-1/B-2 US visa in Jeddah, other than an error on his school's address the application was not suspicious and he was not interviewed before being granted the Visa.
Hamza and Mohand flew together from Iran into Kuwait that October. Three months later the pair rented a post office box in Delray Beach, Florida, where someone with the same name signed up to use the public library's computers[1]. According to FBI director Robert Mueller and the 9/11 Commission however, al-Shehri did not first enter the United States until a London or Dubai flight on May 28 with Hamza and Abdulaziz Al-Omari.
He was one of 9 hijackers to open a SunTrust bank account with a cash deposit around June of 2001, and on July 2 gained a Florida State ID Card.
Mohand occasionally trained on simulators at the FlightSafety Aviation School in Vero Beach, Florida together with Abdulaziz Al-Omari and Saeed Al-Ghamdi
[edit] The Attack
Fayez Banihammad purchased both his and Mohand's one-way first class tickets for United Airlines Flight 175 online on August 27 or 29, charging the $4,464.50 to a Visa card from Mustafa al Hawsawi, listing their addresses both as a Mailboxes Etc. in Delray Beach. This was not the same postal box used by Hamza and Ahmed al-Ghamdi who purchased their tickets for the same flight a day later with another Mailboxes Etc. postal box in Delray Beach, although both groups listed the same phone number.
On September 7 he flew from Fort Lauderdale to Newark, New Jersey with Hamza al-Ghamdi on $139.75 tickets purchased from the Mile High Travel agency in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea.
On September 10, 2001, he 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.
The next morning, Banihammad drove al-Shehri in a rental car to Logan International Airport, where they returned the car and boarded Flight 175. He sat adjacent to Banihammad. About a half an hour into the flight, the plane was hijacked and Marwan al-Shehhi flew it into the south tower of the World Trade Center as part of a coordinated attack that killed thousands.
[edit] Later
On September 20, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal stated: "It was proved that [al-Shehri] had nothing to do with what happened." The Saudi embassy said that al-Shehri is "not dead and had nothing to do with the heinous terror attacks in New York and Washington." However in February of 2002 Saudi Arabia acknowledged for the first time that 15 of the September 11 suicide hijackers were Saudi citizens. Interior Minister Prince Nayef stated, "Previously, Saudi Arabia had said the citizenship of 15 of the 19 hijackers was in doubt despite U.S. insistence they were Saudis. Saudi leaders were shocked to learn 15 of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. "The names that we got confirmed that," Nayef said in an interview. "Their families have been notified."
[edit] External link
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shehri, Mohand al- |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | مهند الشهري (Arabic); Alshehri, Mohand (alternate transliteration); Alshehhi, Mohammed (alias); Alshehri, Mohald (alias) |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | 9/11 hijacker |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 5, 1979 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Asir, Saudi Arabia |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 11, 2001 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | New York City, United States |
