Four additional 9/11 terrorist suspects trained at Florida flight schools owned by Rudi Dekkers; one fled the U.S. in haste just days before the attack, according to sources working at the school at the time.
Three of the four students were Saudi, say sources, while the fourth, 22-year old Marwan Mohammed Shemina, told school officials his father worked for the United Nations in Rome.
News of the additional terror trainees will only heighten the intrigue currently swirling around the controversial Dekkers, who in just the past week sold his terror-tainted flight school, crashed his helicopter, and learned he was being charged with criminal fraud by the Florida State Attorney's office.
The first new terrorist suspect who had trained with Dekkers, Turki M. Almasri, 22, a Saudi national, was named in a story in the Washington Post last week, which said FBI agents spent two days in South Florida searching an unoccupied Palm Beach County home hastily abandoned by a Saudi family just two days before the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Mohammed Almasri and his family moved into the home in July 2000, and his son was a student at Huffman Aviation at the same time hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi studied there, the FBI said.
Magnet for terrorist pilots
Now three more suspected members of the 9/11 terrorist cadre have been identified who were training until just days before the attack at a second Dekkers-operated flight school, Ambassador Aviation, in Naples, FL..
In an exclusive interview with the MadCowMorningNews, Danielle Clark, a former executive at the school, disclosed that school officials told the FBI about three more Arab student pilots, including one abruptly ceased training and disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the days immediately preceding the Sept. 11 attack.
The three include two Saudis, Kamran Hussain, traveling on a UK passport; and Ahmad Badri, who had a Swedish passport; and Marwaan Shemisi, with passports from both Italy and Libya, a reluctant 19-year old who wouldn't emerge from his hotel room to begin flight lessons until after his Libyan mother had been dispatched from Rome to buck up her son.
"Marwan didn't want to be here," said Clark, a flight training manager at Ambassador at the time. "He arrived two weeks late, took two lessons, then took sick and stayed in his hotel room for 10 days."
"When his father called the school, I asked him if we should ship him back," she continued. "Absolutely not,' he said. He's over there to achieve something and he's not coming back.'"
Shortly thereafter his mother arrived, a Libyan woman wearing traditional Arab clothing, although she lived in Rome. Marwan began taking flight training again, but without enthusiasm, said Clark.
The Reluctant Terrorist
"But he didn’t look happy. He appeared very depressed, and only brightened up when talking about playing football (soccer) in the streets of Rome. So one day I asked him, "what is it with you?" I said you don’t know how lucky you are to have your parents paying for flight training."
I want to be a football player, the unhappy student told the school official, who said he should relay his desires to his parents.
"No, they want me to be a pilot," he said. "You don’t understand, I don’t have any say in the matter.
Then, strangely, Marwan's father, who had been so insistent his son stay, now commanded him to leave, just two days shy of completing his courses and getting his multi-engine license.
"It's ridiculous, like dropping out of college near the end of your last semester," explained one aviation executive. School official Danielle Clark says she implored the father to let his son finish his courses…
"Couldn't you extend his stay by just two days so he can finish his multi-rating license?" she asked.
"Absolutely not," was the reply.
Meeting up in Boston?
On the unhappy youth's final day at the school, Clark asked if he was looking forward to going back to Italy.
"I'm not going back to Italy," Marwan replied. "I’m going to Boston."
Why was he going to Boston?
"Because I have to," he replied. "I don’t have a choice."
Several days after he left, Shemisa's hotel called, wondering what they should do with his clothes and large trunks, all of which he'd left behind.
Marwaan Shemisa took a plane to Boston, the assembly point for most of the hijackers, and disappeared on September 6, 2001. It is not known if he was one of the 19 hijackers. No one from the school has heard from him since.
One mystery was cleared up later, however, said Clark.
"Eighty per cent of his tuition was been paid for by the United Nations, which was where he said his father worked. I took it to be a perk of his father's job at the U.N."
When asked in an interview last week to explain the large number of Arab students his flight schools had been 'marching across the tarmac,' financier Wallace J. Hilliard, 70, of Naples, FL, angrily denied reports of the number of Arab students with a terrorist bent who had flocked—so far inexplicably—to his and Dekker's flight schools.
Is "brazen stupidity" a legal defense?
"I’m sorry, what you are saying is grossly untrue," Hilliard stated. "I believe that there were two Arab students, not 22, only two. There were two, period. Two total."
In point of fact the revelation of the four additional terror suspects brings the current total of 9/11 cadre terrorists known to have been enrolled at flight schools owned by Dutch nationals Rudi Dekkers and Arne Kruithof to eight.
Rudi Dekker's figure alone stands at five…and counting.
Hilliard was asked about his business associations with persons of dubious repute, like Rudi Dekkers. One of Hilliard's prized Lear jets was confiscated from him by the DEA after having been found with 43 pounds of heroin aboard.
"I’ve done some stupid things," Hilliard replied. "I have done some very stupid things with airplanes, and it has cost me lots of money."
Pressed further to explain some of his seemingly-inexplicable business decisions with undeniable tragic results, Hilliard resorted to an aphorism…
"Brilliance has its limitations," he told us. "But stupidity has none."
Sadly for Hilliard, "stupidity" is not a valid legal defense. And even if it were, he might have a difficult time convincing a jury that he was mentally challenged.
Very few "stupid" people ever come near that many Lear jets.
Or that much heroin.
