Marwan Yousef al-Shehhi (Arabic: مروان الشحي, also transliterated Alshehhi) (b. May 9, 1978) (d. Sept 11, 2001) was named by the FBI as the suicide pilot aboard United Airlines flight 175 that crashed into the second World Trade Center tower on September 11 2001. He trained at the Huffman Aviation pilot school with Mohammed Atta. He has used the aliases Marwan Yusif Muhammad Rashid Al-Shehi, Marwan Yusif Muhammad Rashid Lakrab Al-Shihhi, and Abu Abdullah. At 23 years of age, he was the youngest of the four terrorist pilots, making him the youngest person ever to fly a large commercial airliner.
History
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 he came back 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 their 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 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 Jerrah 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."[3][4][5]
Shehhi returned to Germany in March of 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.
In the United States
2000
Al-Shehhi left for the United States 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 the flight crews and making final preparations.
On August 23rd, Israeli Mossad reportedly gives his name is given 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.[6][7]
On August 26th, Marwan signs into the Panther Motel in Hollywood, Florida, paying $500 cash saying he wants to stay until the 2nd, and listing a Mailboxes Etc. as his permenant 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[8]. On September 9th, the motel manager is cleaning the room Marwan had vacated and finds a bag containing a German/English dictionary, a protractor, flight manuals and local airport listings. Another employee is later reported to have found a boxcutter.
According to librarian Kathleen Hensmen, Wail and Waleed al-Shehri used the Internet access at Delray Beach Public Library in August of 2001, where they may have been looking at information on crop dusting; they reportedly leave the library with a third middle-eastern man thought to be Marwan, whom Hensmen claims asked her for the name of a local restaurant.
Staff at Shuckum's Oyster Bar later claim that they recognised 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 Marwan drank rum and cokes while talking to the others.
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 attack
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.[9]
Timeline in America
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.[10]
- 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
External link
-
Shehhi's record from Huffman
