Wail Al-Shehri - Aftermath

Aftermath

Waleed al-Shehri was reported to have been found alive by a BBC News article on September 23, 2001, and other news reports in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Reports said that the Shehri brothers were the sons of a Saudi diplomat stationed in New Delhi, Ahmed al-Shehri. The diplomat's son was trained as a pilot at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, and was working as a pilot for Saudi Arabian Airlines. At the time of the attacks, he was in Morocco for a training program. There were also reports that Wail al-Shehri was a trained pilot. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Saudi officials suggested that Wail and Waleed al-Shehri were victims of identity theft, but the diplomat's son was the victim of mistaken identity.

Jamal Khashoggi, of Al-Watan and ArabNews in Saudi Arabia, spoke with Muhammad Ali al-Shehri in Khamis Mushait, who said his sons Wail and Waleed had been missing for months. Wail al-Shehri's father denied reports that Wail had an aeronautics degree, as some news reports said, "My son Wail was 25 years old and had a BA in physical education from the Abha Teacher’s College. He was mentally ill and had gone to numerous clerics for assistance in overcoming this instability. He had asked the school, where he taught, for a 6-month leave to go to Madinah." His father also told reporters that he dreaded having to believe that Wail and Waleed were involved in the September 11 attacks, "If that turns out to be the truth, then I'll never, never accept it from them. I'll never forgive them for that." Family members said that Wail and Waleed became very religious in the months before they disappeared, had expressed interest in going to Chechnya, and hoped for martyrdom. In a report entitled "A Saudi Apology" for Dateline NBC aired on August 25, 2002, John Hockenberry traveled to Asir, where he interviewed Shehri's brother, Salah, who agreed that Wail and Waleed were deceased. Salah described them as not very religious, and suggested they had been brainwashed.

Saudi officials later stated that the names of the hijackers were in fact correct, and that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. In response to 9/11 conspiracy theories surrounding its original news story suggesting hijackers were still alive, the BBC issued a response in 2006, saying that later reports on the hijackers superseded the original story. The BBC also explained that confusion arose with the Arabic names that were common.