Mistaken Identity
On September 23, 2001, before the FBI had released the pictures of the hijackers, the BBC and The Daily Telegraph reported that a Saudi Airlines pilot named Saeed al-Ghamdi was furious that a name on the hijacker's list released by the FBI matched his own. CNN also showed a picture of the "living" Ghamdi as the hijacker. The man claimed CNN likely got his picture from a Flight Safety flying school in Florida he attended. Der Spiegel later investigated the claims of "living" hijackers by the BBC and discovered them to be cases of mistaken identities.
According to immigration records in the Philippines, someone named Saeed al-Ghamdi visited that country on at least 15 occasions in 2001, entering as a tourist. The last visit ended on August 6. This may have been a different person with the same name, as no other information is available.
In June 2005 the Saudi government released a list (see al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) of 36 wanted (and alive) terrorists, one of whom was Salih Sa'id Al Batih al-Ghamdi. 9/11 conspiracy theorists quickly confused him with the hijacker Saeed al-Ghamdi.
He has been portrayed by Iraqi actor Sarmed al-Samarrai in United 93 and Shawn Ahmed in Flight 93.
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Saeed's I-94 form
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Saeed's Customs declaration
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Ghamdi's passport photo.
Read more about this topic: Saeed Al-Ghamdi
Famous quotes containing the words mistaken and/or identity:
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—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)