By Kelly Thornton
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERSeptember 16, 2001

San Diego County’s role as unwitting host to three hijackers was magnified Saturday as dozens of federal agents searched homes and businesses for clues about the men who seemed to live ordinary lives playing soccer, attending school and seeking girlfriends.

Agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Friday night sifted through belongings left behind by Nawaf Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar, who rented a room from September through December last year in the Lemon Grove home of prominent Muslim leader Abdussattar Shaikh.

Alhamzi, Al-Midhar and a third man, Hani Hanjoor – who also lived for a time in San Diego County – were among 19 individuals identified by the FBI as perpetrators of the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. The three were aboard the American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon.

Now it appears the FBI had been searching for Al-Midhar and Alhamzi since August because of connections to Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the attacks.

Shaikh said agents searched his house for seven hours and seized a computer, handwriting samples, a comb and English-language textbooks and workbooks that once belonged to the men.

The retired San Diego State University English professor said he often invites students to live in his five-bedroom house for companionship and to learn other cultures and languages.

He contacted the FBI after hearing his former house guests identified as terrorists in a radio news report Friday.

Bill Gore, head of the San Diego FBI office, said Shaikh is not a suspect, and he allowed his home to be searched. He also is not suspected of knowingly harboring the terrorists.

FBI agents were trying to piece together the many aspects of the hijackers’ lives in San Diego. It appeared the three men, with various spellings of their names, lived in a Clairemont apartment complex before two of them moved to Lemon Grove to live with Shaikh.

They apparently returned to Saudi Arabia and may have lived in Arizona or elsewhere in the United States at some point. They may have returned to the Parkwood Apartments in Clairemont, moving out as recently as three weeks ago.

The FBI also found a link between a Montgomery Field flight school and one of the terrorists after checking the school’s records yesterday, law enforcement sources said. The FBI declined to comment.

Hanjoor, 29, was a commercial pilot who attended flight school in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 1996 and 1997, and may have attended school in San Diego.

While living in Mesa, Ariz., he skipped out without paying a month’s rent and sporadically attended flight school without studying, according to a report in the East Valley Tribune in Mesa. The state suspended Hanjoor’s driver’s license for driving without insurance.

Shaikh said he and his two boarders prayed together five times a day, as Muslim faith requires, in a dining room converted to a prayer room. They also shared meals, but not much conversation, because the two men spoke little English.

“They were nice, but not what you call extroverted people,” said Shaikh, who became close to Alhamzi. As the friendship grew, Shaikh helped Alhamzi open an account at a Bank of America branch in Lemon Grove, and assisted when his houseguest wanted to post a personal ad on a Web site for a Mexican wife. Alhamzi was unable to compose a letter in English. “No one responded,” Shaikh said.

Shaikh had become so fond of Alhamzi that he bought matching jackets for them at Sam’s Club as a parting gift. “He was very good to me. He didn’t talk much, but he was peaceful. I could never know what was going on in his mind. Never in my life would I think he would do such a thing.”

When Shaikh heard the radio report identifying his houseguests as terrorists, his heart raced.

“I was shocked. I could not believe this. It was like the strength of my heart was gone. ‘Not him.’ It was shocking. I am very conflicted because sometimes he was so pleasant, a very caring person.”

Al-Midhar stayed for only a month with Shaikh. He was a “dull” personality who never watched television and took no interest in learning English, Shaikh said. Shaikh, who is Indian and hoped to learn some Arabic from the men, was unable to communicate with Al-Midhar.

Shaikh has deep ties to San Diego. He was a founder of the Islamic Center of San Diego in Clairemont. He has served as a member of the city’s police review board and on a hate crimes task force, among other posts.

“I’ve been here 42 years in this country, and my blood boiled and I got angry as much as any other American did, maybe more because I knew that guy, because he betrayed me,” Shaikh said. “And still, I feel that people will think I shared their criminal will, and I didn’t know that he was criminal.”

The Muslim community was feeling the heat yesterday after news broke that the hijackers had lived here.

A representative of the Islamic Center of San Diego said the three hijackers did not attend there.

“I asked 30 to 35 people (Friday) night. None of them knows them,” said Tawfik Bailony, a National City physician who is on the center’s board.

Bailony said the center and its Muslim members have encountered both hostility and warmth since the attack. He said the center has received threatening phone calls and was hit with paint balls. But people also have offered support, he said.

The contrasts were illustrated just before yesterday’s midday service at the center. A woman stood on the sidewalk and yelled, “Go home. You don’t like America. Get out of our  . . . neighborhood.”

A few minutes later, another woman stopped by to drop off a bouquet of flowers.

Bailony said Tuesday’s attacks devastated the center’s members.

“We are part of this country,” he said. “We are Americans like everyone else. We hurt like you do and we are hurting more because of the color of our skin and the accents we speak.”

The FBI began searching for Al-Midhar and Alhamzi after their names were added to a terrorist watch list.

Al-Midhar was identified as having connections to bin Laden. Al-Midhar had been seen on a surveillance videotape meeting in Malaysia with one of the suspects in the Oct. 12, 2000, terrorist bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen.

The attack, thought to have been sponsored by bin Laden, killed 17 American sailors and injured 37.

Intelligence officials alerted immigration officials nearly two months ago that the men might try to enter the country, but records revealed they already had entered at Los Angeles International Airport on Saudi passports, although their whereabouts were unknown, according to media reports citing Justice Department and intelligence sources.

At the Parkwood Apartments yesterday, Steve Fremland and Mechelle Boose moved their furniture into the $1,100-a-month apartment where the hijackers are believed to have lived.

Boose said the apartment managers told her the two-bedroom apartment was a mess when the previous tenants left. It took three people five hours to clean it. Boose said she was unsettled to learn her new apartment might have a notorious history.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” she said.