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Cyclic Hotline
12th Sep 2001, 22:26
There are various stories starting to surface now about the flight training background of the perpetrators of these horrifying acts of violence.

This forum may provide the greatest single means for locating various individuals from around the world, who may have inadvertently been directly in contact with these (and other) individuals involved with this.

As the US investigation is primarily targeted with the immediate collection of data within the US, it may be that people currently outside the US, have important information regarding these individuals.

If you have any information, be sure to contact the FBI on their Website, http://www.ifccfbi.gov, and telephone hotline, (800) 331-0075, or your local authorities.


Florida Locations Searched in Attack Probe
By Jim Loney and Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. agents searched homes and businesses in Florida in connection with the attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites), focusing on an aviation school where two suspects may have received flight training, police and media said Wednesday.

Search warrants were served on homes in Davie and Coral Springs, two towns west of Fort Lauderdale, and agents searched businesses in Hollywood and a home in Sarasota County on the state's west coast, according to police and television reports.

FBI (news - web sites) agents interviewed a former employee of a Florida flight school who may have housed two of the suspects in his home for a short time and seized files and a computer from the school, a newspaper reported.

Media attention focused on a man named Mohammed Atta, who according to various reports was apparently listed on the flight manifest of one of the hijacked planes.

A Miami FBI spokeswoman, Judy Orihuela, declined comment on the reports. "I can't say anything ... my hands are tied,'' she said.

"I am not aware of any arrests at this point,'' she added.

The FBI searched the Sarasota County home of a man believed to have connections with two flight schools in the area, Venice, Florida, police said.

"They did do a search warrant on a guy who has connections with a flight school in our city at Venice airport,'' Venice Police Det. Sgt. Mike Treanor said. "They were there early this morning. They had the road closed off.''

Charles Voss, an employee of Huffman Aviation Inc., a flight school at Venice Municipal Airport on Florida's west coast, told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that FBI agents visited his home after finding Atta had registered a car there.

He said the car was a red 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix and said the FBI told him it had been seized at Logan International Airport in Boston. The newspaper said Florida drivers license records showed Atta registered the Pontiac to Voss' house.

Voss told the newspaper that Atta and another Middle Eastern man know only as Marwan trained at Huffman's flight school, arriving in July 2000 and staying through January.

He said he allowed the men to live for about a week in his spare bedroom before they made other arrangements.

"This is a sick and horrible thing,'' Voss told the newspaper. "It's a real real sick thing to even imagine that somebody of this caliber was even under my roof.''

Venice airport is an old World War Two airport, used by small planes. Huffman attracts students from other nations including Germany, Spain and Iran, Treanor said.

Police in Coral Springs, Florida, said FBI agents visited an apartment in the city late Tuesday. WPLG television of Miami, an ABC affiliate, reported that the apartment was believed to belong to Atta, 33.

The city's Web site said: "The FBI out of Miami report that there may be suspects in South Florida linked to the disaster in New York. They are currently following up on leads to some residents in South Florida that may have some involvement in yesterday's tragedy.''

Coral Springs police issued a bulletin from the FBI asking officers and residents to watch for two vehicles -- a 1989 two-door red Pontiac with license number D79 DDV or DVD, and a tan four-door Oldsmobile with license number VEP 54N.

Local academics said it was no surprise that federal agents had focused attention on ethnically diverse south and central Florida, teeming with immigrants from around the world.

The Islamic Society of Central Florida, located in Orlando, estimates the Muslim population of central Florida alone at about 25,000, the majority from India.

The passenger manifests of the hijacked jets included the names of at least four Florida residents suspected of being supporters of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), the Saudi-born militant now living in Afghanistan (news - web sites) who has been named as a possible suspect in the attacks, Miami television station WSVN, a Fox affiliate, said.

Workers at a south Florida restaurant were shown pictures of two men believed involved in the hijackings, WSVN said.

"They said, 'Well we have pictures of people and we want to know if you can identify any of them,''' a restaurant worker told the station. "And I said 'Well, I can identify one of the guys,' and I said 'They were in here Friday.'''

WPLG, the Miami ABC affiliate, said a man was taken into custody Wednesday in Vero Beach and was being taken to the FBI's Miami headquarters for questioning.

Other media reports said U.S. agents were searching homes and facilities in Daytona Beach and Vero Beach, two east coast Florida towns, Wednesday

scroggs
13th Sep 2001, 00:34
I think you might overstate the case. The US authorities obviously have a line of enquiry to follow in Florida, and the obvious people to ask are the permanent staff of those schools. As each school must have a record of all its students, and if the FBI wants to talk to any contemporary students, they'll know where to find you.
If you have information which you think may be of use to the FBI or NTSB, you should volunteer it straight to those authorities. I don't want this forum to become a place where amateur sleuths compare notes as to which schools were hosting 'suspicious-looking' students. You've either got useful info to give to the feds, or you haven't. Don't speculate here please.

Cyclic Hotline
13th Sep 2001, 02:54
Apologies. It was not my intent to start speculating here on this board, nor post this information to this thread. Nor will I be a participant in any type of racial profiling or bigotary.

People using this forum could potentially have important information regarding the specific individuals now being named, or their acquaintances. The sheer volume of participants and information contained in this forum could potentially turn up valuable information about these individuals as people who frequent PPRuNe, might even have come into direct contact with them. Wannabes seem to keep heading to Florida for flight training.

Remember Mathias Rust who landed in Red Square? I do, because a bunch of people I know met him when he passed through the airport and stopped overnight. Although they had no ground breaking information regarding his thinking or motives, they did allow the complete story of his activities to be reconstructed.

Small pieces of information may provide more insight than months of digging if you don't know directly where to look.

Please feel free to delete this thread if you feel it has no value, or may cause unecessary problems. It is not my intent to start a DIY investigation.

Superpilot
13th Sep 2001, 21:43
What I can’t understand is, these terrorists go through all that meticulous planning, execute the evil with pinpoint precision and then leave evidence lying around so blatantly? When the FBI, CIA or NTSB investigate why is the evidence always so overly convenient? (Arabic 757/767 manuals and videos on how to fly them). Although I’m certain it is the work of some Middle Eastern nutter, something definitely stinks.

zoru
13th Sep 2001, 22:01
Superpilot,

imho that those responsible actually wanted the authorities to discover their trail after the event...leading to something that no one can even contemplate in the future.

Facts Not Fiction Pls
14th Sep 2001, 07:01
All that this has done is cause a great deal of loss and pain. Let the FBI do their job but lets not aggravate things. The news media is doing its job of reporting the information therefore anyone with leads will know where to go. Leave this site for the love of aviation rather than the sick minded who use it as a tool of massacre.

The schools that were involved were no more at fault than the rest of the world - therefore there is no need to broadcast to the wannabees as the negative this talk comes across as. :)

[ 14 September 2001: Message edited by: Facts Not Fiction Pls ]