SwiftVets.com

[SBD]

I found this link between the owner of the plane and a story from September 2001. Apparently Afzal Hameed and his wife Alyce owned a San Antonio Aviation Instruction school.

Reports that some of the hijackers may have learned to fly commercial jets in the United States prompted Hameed Afzal, who operates a flight school at San Antonio International Airport, to call the FBI and turn over his flight school records to the agency.

Now this guys plane is forced to land with 4 illegal chinese and an illegal Mexican pilot. Seems kind of strange to me!!

Read both stories below,

SBD


Plane Forced to Land; Dirty Bomb Link Investigated
Link to Story WOAI SAN ANTONIO

Department of Homeland Security officials forced a small plane carrying four apparently illegal Chinese immigrants and a pilot identified as a Mexican national to land at an airport in San Antonio Monday night, officials said today. The immigrants were being held at Stinson Airfield shortly after federal agents forced their plane down.

Authorities are trying to determine if the four pasengers on board the Cessna 172-P, two men and two women, are linked to a report that several Chinese nationals were attempting to set off a 'dirty bomb' in the Boston area.

Online records of the Federal Aviation Administration show the 20-year-old plane is co-owned by Afzal Hameed of Dover, Del. The other co-owner is listed as Alyce S. Taylor, but no address is given for her. The FAA records state that the plane's last three-year registration was filed in 1999, and that the agency received no response in 2002 after mailing new registration forms to Hameed.

San Antonio Police surrounded the airport close to 9 p.m. Monday after receiving a call for help from the Department of Homeland Security, officials said. The single-engine plane was intercepted after officials said it was flying in American airspace illegally.

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will hold these people and will determine what their status will be," San Antonio police Captain Jeff Humphrey told 1200 WOAI news.

Humphrey said it appears to be an 'alleged smuggling case.'

Officials say the pilot of the plane told investigators that he had taken off from 'south of the border,' but Humphrey said he could not say any more. He said he didn't know where they were heading.

A federal government source who asked not to be identified told 1200 WOAI news a preliminary search of the terrorist data base did not indicate that any of the four passengers were on it.

Humphrey said its undetermined right now whether the four people on board were related to the hint of a dirty bomb plot' in Boston.

"I've been looking at the pictures (of the Boston suspects) on the TV like everybody else, and I did not recognize anything that would make me think that there was a connection," Humphrey said.

He said Department of Homeland Security was also questioning the pilot. No word on his identity.

A man suspected of telling authorities about the possible terror threat in Boston has been detained in a Mexican border town and was being questioned about last week's tip and his motivation for calling it in, FBI officials said. Jose Ernesto Beltran Quinones was taken into custody Monday in Mexicali by Mexican state judicial police, Dan Dzwilewski, special agent in charge of the FBI's San Diego division, told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Quinones, one of the 16 people sought for questioning last week about the alleged terror plot, was being questioned on behalf of the FBI, special agent Kiffa Shirley told The Associated Press.

"The first area of concern for the FBI is to resolve any pending national security threat issues, and that issue being the statement that was made that nuclear material was being brought into the United States," Dzwilewski said. "We're working with Mexican authorities trying to resolve that question."

Shirley said late Monday he did not know Quinones' nationality, age or occupation, or where he was being questioned.

Officials have stressed since news of the tip first broke that they doubted the credibility of the terror claims. A leading theory was that a smuggler tipped authorities to a false terror plot to exact revenge on a group of Chinese immigrants, perhaps because members failed to pay.

The tipster claimed that members of the group had talked about material supposedly called "nuclear oxide" that would follow them from Mexico to Boston. The implication was that the group was plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" that spews hazardous material and can sicken or kill people.

No evidence has been found for such a plot. Still, authorities stepped up security in Boston, and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney skipped President Bush's inauguration in Washington.

Dzwilewski said the United States would like to extradite Quinones, who Shirley said was being interviewed as part of a joint investigation by the FBI and Mexican authorities.

"We're so pleased with the extraordinary cooperation of Mexican authorities," Shirley said.

Over the weekend, the FBI said another person who had been wanted for questioning in relation to the alleged plot had been in federal custody for more than two months and has no terrorist connections. She was identified as Mei Xia Dong, 21, of China.

For the latest on this developing story, tune now to NewsRadio 1200 WOAI and watch News 4 WOAI for the complete story.


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San Antonio Express-News (Texas) September 16, 2001, Sunday

S.A. doctor questioned, held in N.Y.
BYLINE: Bill Hendricks

The investigation into last week's terrorist attacks has reached San Antonio: Authorities confirmed Saturday they are interrogating an Alamo City doctor in New York, while a flight school operator says he fears he might have trained some of the hijackers here.

Abader Alhazmi, a 34-year-old radiologist who has been living and taking advanced medical training in San Antonio, was being questioned by federal authorities as a possible co-conspirator in the attacks on the United States, federal officials confirmed.

The doctor hasn't been charged, officials said; he's being held on matters related to his immigration status.

It's unclear where the doctor's wife and children are staying. Residents in their Northwest Side neighborhood said Saturday the family hasn't been seen recently.

Alhazmi is among a rapidly growing list of suspects who have been detained over the past few days in connection with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In recent days, law enforcement officials said they have issued search warrants and hundreds of subpoenas. They've interviewed hundreds of people.

The investigation broadened Saturday as the FBI sent a list of more than 100 names to 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, the New York Times reported.

Federal agents are using immigration laws to hold about 25 people, including two men seized Wednesday on an Amtrak train in Fort Worth.

They were riding from St. Louis, apparently having disembarked from a plane, and were believed to be headed to San Antonio, said FBI spokeswoman Lori Bailey, according to the Washington Post.

"They have no legal premise for being in the country," Bailey said.

The two men were taken off the train by Drug Enforcement Agents conducting a routine narcotics sweep.

The pair told agents they were from India but had no documents. They were carrying $5,000 in cash and a box cutter, Bailey said.

There are other possible connections to San Antonio.

The names of two of the suspected hijackers - Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi - show up on local records with San Antonio addresses.

No one answered at Saeed Alghamdi's home on the Southwest Side, but one neighbor said he thought he had seen Alghamdi and his family Friday.

Pentagon sources have confirmed a man named Saeed Alghamdi graduated from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland AFB in San Antonio.

A woman at Ahmed Alghamdi's home on the North Side said her husband had not lived in the United States "for a long time."

The two names also appear on a list at a housing facility for foreign military trainees at Pensacola, Fla.

Two men with the same names as two other suspected hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari, appear as graduates of the U.S. International Officers School at Maxwell AFB, Ala., and the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks AFB in San Antonio, respectively, according to the Washington Post.

The name Mohamed Atta also appears on a check of San Antonio records, showing someone with that name living at base housing at Lackland AFB.

Reports that some of the hijackers may have learned to fly commercial jets in the United States prompted Hameed Afzal, who operates a flight school at San Antonio International Airport, to call the FBI and turn over his flight school records to the agency.

Afzal said late Friday that a couple of names he saw on a published list of suspects were familiar to him, but stressed that he didn't know for sure that any of the kamikaze pilots had been trained at his small school.

"I won't know until I see their photographs," Afzal said.

Afzal, a Pakistani native who immigrated to the United States in 1980, and his wife, Alyce, own Alpha Tango Flying Service.

The couple said their school has trained scores of foreign nationals to fly private and commercial aircraft in the past 20 years.

Late Friday, Afzal said the FBI hasn't asked for an interview, and that there have been no substantive discussions between him and agents.

On Saturday, Dr. Francisco Cigarroa, president of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, said staffers and faculty at the school were caught off-guard by the FBI's interest in Alhazmi.

"There's always that sense that it's unbelievable that the tentacles of this thing might be this far reaching," he said. "But we still don't know all the facts. The law enforcement agencies are keeping things close to their chest."

Cigarroa stressed the physician has been in good standing with the university.

He most recently was assigned a medical rotation at Wilford Hall Medical Center.

"Regarding this individual we're talking about, certainly, this has all caught us by surprise, but everyone's innocent until proven guilty," Cigarroa said. "He obviously went through a very rigorous application process (to be a resident doctor), and he's certainly well qualified."

Neighbors said Alhazmi has lived with his wife and young children for nearly three years in a gated enclave of townhouses off Babcock Road near the South Texas Medical Center.

According to his neighbors, federal agents descended on the complex within hours of the Tuesday morning attacks and returned early the next day.

Residents said agents piled boxes of material on the sidewalk, along with a computer taken from Alhazmi's townhouse, and then carted it all off.

There were dishes in the sink, children's toys scattered on the floor and the family's van still was in the garage Saturday.

The Alhazmis left the appearance they'd only stepped out for a few minutes, but by late last week, their neighbors were saying they hadn't seen the family in several days.

Ty Heath, a 29-year-old medical student who lived on the same street, said the doctor, his wife and children were often seen with two other families that lived in the 8000 block of Galaway Bay.

The wives always dressed in traditional Muslim attire and walked together with their children late in the afternoon to the tiny park at the end of their street, Heath said.

While the women and children were at the park, Alhazmi and the two other men would sit in front of the doctor's townhouse and talk, the neighbor added.

According to the Bexar County Medical Society, Alhazmi got his medical degree at King Abdul Aziz University, at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1992.

A man who does yard work in the neighborhood said several other Muslim families, all friends of the Alhazmis, had moved out within the past year, one within the past month.

Residents said one of the Muslim men mentioned he worked at the Lackland AFB language school, while another said he was a major in the Saudi Arabian army.

Realtor John Skye, who rented a home to the major, his wife and three children, said he was told the man was attending a training program at one of the military bases in town.

GRAPHIC: ROBERT MCLEROY/STAFF : The owner of Alpha Tango Flying Service, a local flight school, fears he may have trained some of the hijackers in last week's attacks.

[FreeFall]

Interesting connection. I don't believe in coincidence when it comes to the mob or terrorism.