Mohand al-Shehri

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Mohand al-Shehri
مهند الشهري
Born
Mohand Muhammed Fayiz al-Shehri

(1979-05-07)May 7, 1979
DiedSeptember 11, 2001(2001-09-11) (aged 22)
Cause of deathSuicide by plane crash (September 11 attacks)
NationalitySaudi Arabian

Mohand Muhammed Fayiz al-Shehri (

Arabic: مهند الشهري, Muhand ash-Shehrī; also transliterated as Alshehri) (May 7, 1979 – September 11, 2001) was a Saudi terrorist hijacker. He was one of five terrorist hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 175 as part of the September 11 attacks. Despite his name, he was not related to the brothers Wail al-Shehri or Waleed al-Shehri who were part of the team that hijacked American Airlines Flight 11
.

A Saudi, al-Shehri was a former college student who dropped out after failing his courses. He later left his home to fight in Chechnya in 2000, but was probably diverted to Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. It was during that time that he would be chosen to take part in the attacks in America. He received a U.S. student visa in October 2000.

al-Shehri arrived in the United States in May 2001. On September 11, 2001, al-Shehri boarded United Airlines Flight 175 and assisted in its hijacking so that it could be flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

History

Visa Application

Born 1979, al-Shehri was one of five hijackers to come from the

Bani Shehr
, although they were not related to him.

According to

B-1/B-2 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.[1]

Al-Ghamdi and al-Shehri flew together from Iran into Kuwait that October.[2] 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.[3] 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 al-Ghamdi and Abdulaziz al-Omari.[citation needed]

He was one of nine hijackers to open a

SunTrust bank account with a cash deposit around June 2001, and on July 2 gained a Florida State ID Card.[4]

Al-Shehri occasionally trained on simulators at the

.

Attacks

Mustafa al Hawsawi, listing their addresses both as a Mail Boxes 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 shared a room at the Milner Hotel in

Boston, Massachusetts with three other terrorists: Fayez Banihammad, Marwan al-Shehhi, who would pilot Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and Satam al-Suqami, a hijacker of Flight 11
.

On September 11, al-Shehri boarded Flight 175 and sat in first class seat 2B, next to Banihammad in 2A. About a half an hour into the flight, the plane was hijacked. It is believed that Banihammad and al-Shehri forcibly entered the cockpit and murdered the pilots while the al-Ghamdi brothers forced the remaining crew and passengers towards the rear of the aircraft, allowing al-Shehhi to take control of the plane. At 9:03 a.m., around 20 minutes after the hijacking began, al-Shehhi flew the plane into the South Tower of the World Trade Center between floors 77 and 85, killing all on board and killing or trapping hundreds of people inside the building. 56 minutes after the crash, at 9:59 a.m., the South Tower collapsed, killing all who were trapped and many more on the ground.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Staff Monograph on 9/11 and Terrorist Travel" (PDF). 9/11 Commission. 2004.
  2. ^ 9/11 Commission Report, p. 240.
  3. ^ "09.11.01: One Year Later." St. Petersburg Times. September 1, 2002.
  4. ^ "Hijacker True Name Usage Chart for 2001" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-05-12. Retrieved 2010-08-24.

External links

Media related to Mohand al-Shehri at Wikimedia Commons