Reports After September 11 Attacks
On September 23, 2001 BBC News reported that al-Shehri was "alive and well" in Casablanca, Morocco and was talking to multiple media organizations; however, due to confusion over the man's identity, and editorial concerns over conspiracy theories, BBC News later modified the September 23 report by inserting "A man called ... " BBC News considers the September 23 report superseded by an October 5, 2001 report that lists Waleed as one of the alleged hijackers believed by the FBI to be responsible for the September 11 attacks.
Waleed and Wail were both reported to have been initially found, in error, by a Saudi newspaper editor as the sons of Ahmed Alshehri, a senior Saudi diplomat stationed in Bombay, India. On September 16, 2001, the diplomat Ahmed Alshehri denied that he was the father of the two hijackers. Wail claims he did attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida — but was the victim of mistaken identity, since he used that training to secure his current position with a Moroccan airline company. Saudi Arabia has confirmed his story, and suggested he was the victim of identity theft.
Muhammad Ali al-Shehri, the Shehri brothers' true father, was identified prior to September 17, 2001, and told Arab News that he had not heard from his sons in ten months prior to September 2001. An ABC News story in March 2002 repeated this, and during a report entitled "A Saudi Apology" for Dateline NBC on Aug 25 2002, NBC reporter John Hockenberry traveled to 'Asir, where he interviewed the third brother, Salah, who agreed that his two brothers were dead and claimed they had been "brainwashed".
Furthermore another article explains that the pilot who lives in Casablanca was named Walid al-Shri (not Waleed M. al-Shehri) and that much of the BBC information regarding "alive" hijackers was incorrect according to the same sources used by BBC. In September 2007, a video recording of his last testament was released to mark the 6th anniversary of the attacks.
Read more about this topic: Waleed Al-Shehri
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