It was 12 days after 9/11 when the BBC ran their story "Hijack 'suspects' alive and well", leading with an account of Saudi pilot Waleed Al Shehri saying he had nothing to do with the attacks. It included the line "His photograph was released, and has since appeared in newspapers and on television around the world", and this photo...
...which led people to believe that the FBI had got it wrong. And although the BBC didn't include key details (he said elsewhere that a friend saw his photo on CNN, not that he saw any photos at all), it initially looked like a strong case.
Of course, after that people began to notice differences.
The pilot was Waleed A (for Ahmed, I think) Alshehri, while the hijacker was Waleed M (Mohammed?) Alshehri.
The pilot said he didn't have a brother called Wail. The hijacker did.
The pilot was, well, a pilot. The hijacker was a "university dropout".
The pilot's father was a diplomat. The hijacker's father was a businessman who accepted his sons had disappeared and were somehow involved (though the family questioned whether they would have knowingly taken part).
But all that could be waved away as "lies", "faked evidence" or whatever, people still clung to the idea that as he said he saw his photo, that trumped everything else. He was still alive.
This ignored the fact that the FBI didn't release their official photo list until September 27th, though. We know that CNN released photos of the wrong people, so who could say which photo the pilot Alshehri actually saw?
Then just last week I had the chance to find out, finally uncovering the CNN clip. I expected to see a picture of someone else labelled as Waleed Alshehri, but I was wrong. This was it:
CNN used the same photo that the FBI would officially release later. So much for my theory. But I soon realised there was another one. Take a look at the guy labelled at Wail Alshehri above: that's not a photo I recognised, not the alleged hijacker at all. So could this be Waleed A Alshehri instead? Was this the image his friend saw? There was no way to tell without a photo. And I didn't imagine I'd be getting one any time soon.
But I was wrong about that, too.
So here he is, everyone. For the first time ever in a 9/11 forum thread, here's a picture of the pilotl Waleed A Alshehri:
Original Arabic source
Dodgy Google translation
Is he the same guy that CNN showed as "Wail Alshehri"? It's too low-res to be sure, but I think it's likely:
Certainly it's a closer resemblance than to the FBI photo of Waleed M Alshehri. And more solid evidence that these are two different people. Waleed A was caught up in this because people were looking for pilots with similar names to the hijackers, and for that, and other reasons (perhaps like training in Florida where they knew other suspects had been) he became a suspect himself. But the reality is he has a different name, a different profession, a different age, a different family, and as we can now see, a different face. Waleed A and Waleed M are two separate individuals, and the Saudi pilot story provides no evidence whatsoever that the hijacker is still alive.
...which led people to believe that the FBI had got it wrong. And although the BBC didn't include key details (he said elsewhere that a friend saw his photo on CNN, not that he saw any photos at all), it initially looked like a strong case.
Of course, after that people began to notice differences.
The pilot was Waleed A (for Ahmed, I think) Alshehri, while the hijacker was Waleed M (Mohammed?) Alshehri.
The pilot said he didn't have a brother called Wail. The hijacker did.
The pilot was, well, a pilot. The hijacker was a "university dropout".
The pilot's father was a diplomat. The hijacker's father was a businessman who accepted his sons had disappeared and were somehow involved (though the family questioned whether they would have knowingly taken part).
But all that could be waved away as "lies", "faked evidence" or whatever, people still clung to the idea that as he said he saw his photo, that trumped everything else. He was still alive.
This ignored the fact that the FBI didn't release their official photo list until September 27th, though. We know that CNN released photos of the wrong people, so who could say which photo the pilot Alshehri actually saw?
Then just last week I had the chance to find out, finally uncovering the CNN clip. I expected to see a picture of someone else labelled as Waleed Alshehri, but I was wrong. This was it:
CNN used the same photo that the FBI would officially release later. So much for my theory. But I soon realised there was another one. Take a look at the guy labelled at Wail Alshehri above: that's not a photo I recognised, not the alleged hijacker at all. So could this be Waleed A Alshehri instead? Was this the image his friend saw? There was no way to tell without a photo. And I didn't imagine I'd be getting one any time soon.
But I was wrong about that, too.
So here he is, everyone. For the first time ever in a 9/11 forum thread, here's a picture of the pilotl Waleed A Alshehri:
Original Arabic source
Dodgy Google translation
Is he the same guy that CNN showed as "Wail Alshehri"? It's too low-res to be sure, but I think it's likely:
Certainly it's a closer resemblance than to the FBI photo of Waleed M Alshehri. And more solid evidence that these are two different people. Waleed A was caught up in this because people were looking for pilots with similar names to the hijackers, and for that, and other reasons (perhaps like training in Florida where they knew other suspects had been) he became a suspect himself. But the reality is he has a different name, a different profession, a different age, a different family, and as we can now see, a different face. Waleed A and Waleed M are two separate individuals, and the Saudi pilot story provides no evidence whatsoever that the hijacker is still alive.
