Tag: Hani Hanjour

28 January 2001

Posted on by Featherproof Books

 

In Dubai, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali (Ammar al-Baluchi) deposits $5,000 into the Citibank account of Saudi Hani Hanjour. Hanjour, who would fly the plane into the Pentagon on 9/11, was the last of the four pilots to come onboard with the plot and the only Saudi amongst the pilots.

Aziz Ali, a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (and often called “Cousin Ali” by the other hijackers, was located in the United Arab Emirates, and thus was the secure (and less suspicious) financial link between al Qaeda and the hijackers in the United States (rather than KSM in Pakistan).

He was captured in a police raid in Karachi, Pakistan on April 30, 2003, and is now in Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

12 December 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Hani Hanjour and Nawaf al-Hazmi arrive in Mesa, Arizona from San Diego in preparation for Hanjour—the pilot of the plane that hit the Pentagon—to renew his flight certification and practice handling the controls of large commercial airliners.

Hanjour and al-Hazmi rent apartment #10 on 2221 West Farmdale Avenue and Hanjour enrolls in refresher training. They move to apartment #2144, Indian Springs Village, 1031 South Stewart Street in Mesa in January.

Hanjour starts with classroom training at Arizona Aviation and then starts simulator training at Pan Am International Jet Tech through March 2001. The 9/11 Commission later said that flight instructors found his performance to be sub-standard and they discouraged Hanjour from continuing training.

8 December 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Hani Hanjour, pilot of the plane that attacked the Pentagon, arrives in San Diego, California from Dubai (via Paris and Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport).

The Saudi is sent to San Diego by al Qaeda to pick up Nawaf al-Hazmi—part of the San Diego duo of Khalid al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, the original two planes’ operatives sent to the United States in January 2000. They had been picked as pilots by Osama bin Laden, but neither managed to obtain pilots licenses, and Mihdhar left the U.S. six months later (only to return in July 2001). Nawaf, who could not speak English, needed a chaperone, as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed feared that his closeness to the Muslim community ran the risk of exposing him, not to the FBI but to Saudi intelligence.

Hanjour, the only hijacker/pilot with experience in the United States, then drives with al-Hazmi to Arizona, where he had previously lived, and undertakes additional flight training to brush up on his skills. The two then relocate to Northern Virginia.

26 November 1996

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Saudi citizen Hani Hanjour, who would go on to pilot the plane that attacked the Pentagon, departs the United States for Saudi Arabia. He had been living in Scottsdale, Arizona and attending flight training, where he was hoping to become a commercial airline pilot.

Hanjour was the only one of the four 9/11 hijackers who had been to the United States prior to June 2000. He lived in the U.S. in October 1991 and enrolled in English language school in Tucson. He then returned in 1996, arriving in New York on April 2, living for a month in Florida before moving to Oakland, California, where he attended English language school at the ELS Language Center at Holy Names College (3510 Mountain Boulevard in Oakland, CA) from May until August 1996.

Though the 9/11 plot didn’t begin until much later—and Hanjour was the last of the pilots to join the group—his earlier residence and travel in the United States (and his attending flight school) never attracted the attention of any authorities or the intelligence community, such was the blind trust given over to Saudi citizens.

25 September 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Hani Hanjour, the pilot of the United Airlines plane that hit the Pentagon, returns to the American consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and makes a second application for an American student visa. An earlier visa application (on September 10) had been denied because, though Hanjour applied for a B-1/B-2 business/tourist visa, he stated that he intended to attend school.

The consulate told him he’d have to reapply. This time, Hanjour states a desire to attend English language school at the ELS Language Center in Oakland, California.

The 911 Commission found that Hanjour had been issued an F (student) visa in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia passport #C241922. But a complete search of his records indicated that he had already received an approved change of status to attend this same English language school in 1996. That earlier approval of visa status was granted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) while Hanjour was earlier in the United States. In these days before computer networks and information sharing, the consulate had no record of the earlier application (a likely cause for disqualification if he was deemed to have shown deception).

21 September 1991

Posted on by William Arkin
Hani Hanjour

 

Saudi citizen Hani Hanjour, who would pilot the hijacked United Airlines plane into the Pentagon, is issued a visa in Jeddah for travel to the United States to attend flight training, a decade before 9/11. He is the first 9/11 hijacker known to visit the U.S.

In November 1997, he again applied for and received an American visa, unrelated to the terrorist attacks. To the question of whether he had ever applied for a U.S. visa before, he answers “no.” He also answers “no” to the question, “Have you ever been in the U.S.A.?”

The 9/11 Commission stated that it was “difficult to establish the intent behind these false statements.” The Commission speculated that they may have been made inadvertently by a travel agent who filled out the form on Hanjour’s behalf. Still, they concluded that it was “perplexing” that Hanjour might try to hide previous travel to the U.S. because it actually works in his favor—that is, that he was not seeking to clandestinely relocate to the U.S. After 9/11, obviously the criteria for issuing visas to Arab men was changed.