Attacks
On September 11, 2001, Nami arrived in Newark to board United Airlines Flight 93 along with Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Haznawi and Ziad Jarrah. Some reports suggest Haznawi was pulled aside for screening while others claim there is no record of whether any of the four were screened; the lack of CCTV cameras at the time has compounded the problem. Nami boarded the plane between 7:39 am and 7:48 am; seated in First Class 3C, next to Saeed al-Ghamdi.
Due to the flight's routine delay, the pilot and crew were notified of the previous hijackings and were told to be on the alert, though within two minutes Jarrah had stormed the cockpit leaving the pilots dead or injured.
At least two of the cellphone calls made by passengers indicate that all the hijackers they saw were wearing red bandanas, which some have questioned may have signified an allegiance to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The calls also indicated that one of the men had tied a box around his torso, and claimed there was a bomb inside; it is not known which hijacker this was.
Passengers on the plane heard through phone calls the fates of the other hijacked planes, and organized a brief assault to retake the cockpit. The hijackers crashed the plane into the Pennsylvania farmland rather than cede control of the plane. All aboard died.
Read more about this topic: Ahmed Al-Nami
Famous quotes containing the word attacks:
“Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
“We are supposed to be the children of Seth; but Seth is too much of an effete nonentity to deserve ancestral regard. No, we are the sons of Cain, and with violence can be associated the attacks on sound, stone, wood and metal that produced civilisation.”
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)