US officials are investigating whether some or all of the 19 hijackers on the four hijacked aircraft used in last week's terror attacks used stolen identities, possibly complicating efforts to link them to Osama bin Laden.
The doubts started to emerge when at least four men with names matching those on an FBI list of the hijackers turned up alive in Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, according to newspaper reports.
An unnamed senior US official was quoted in yesterday's Washington Post that there was now uncertainty over the list of names. "There may be some question with regard to the identity of at least some of them," he said.
The Chicago Tribune spoke to an unnamed Justice Department official who said "the names on the list are the best information that we have, [but] we are investigating the possibility of identity theft and false identification."
The doubts grew when FBI agents fanning out across the country and around the world looking for accomplices of the hijackers arrested three suspects of Arab origins in Detroit on Tuesday, but were unable to immediately say from which country they came. The three were charged with possession of false documents.
Another four people have been arrested as material suspects -- individuals believed to have information vital to the case -- and the Immigration and Naturalization Service is holding between 75 and 115 people on immigration concerns who may also be able to help the investigation. Another 200 are being sought.
The Chicago Tribune said the FBI believed many of the hijackers had taken martial arts courses ahead of the attacks and reported that some gyms had handed over their records to investigators.
FBI director Robert Mueller said last week as he released what he said were the names of the hijackers that his bureau had "a fairly high level of confidence" that they were their true identities.
But at least one Arabic newspaper, the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat, said this week it had found two of the Saudis named on the list, Abdelaziz al-Omari and Said Hussein Gharamallah al-Ghamdi, alive and well.
Omari said he had been at work at the Saudi telecommunications authority in Riyadh when the Sept. 11 attacks happened and had nothing to do with them, adding that his passport had been stolen in Denver, Colorado in 1995.
He said that he could not be the man with pilot training the FBI claimed he was, saying "I am an electrical engineer and I have no idea how to fly a plane."
Ghamdi, a Saudi Arabian Airlines pilot reported to be in Tunisia, told the paper he saw his photograph on television -- received by the FBI from a Florida flight school -- but said he had been in Tunis for the past nine months, training with colleagues.
The Chicago Tribune said it had a report that another "hijacker," Waleed M. Alshehri, was also a pilot for Saudi Arabian Airlines and was still alive, according to his father.
It also said that the Saudi press had found Amer Kamfar, who the FBI was seeking as a suspect in the case, was a pilot living in Saudi Arabia.
There was confusion over the nationalities of the three men arrested in Detroit Tuesday, who the FBI named as Ahmed Hannan, 33, Karim Koubriti, 23, and Farouk Ali-Halmoud, 21.
"They stated they were Moroccan," Special Agent Hank Glaspie said Wednesday, but added that under questioning they also said they were from Albania and Iran.
The men were arrested for possession of falsified documents, including US immigration forms and a visa, as agents searched for a fourth man, identified as Nabil Al-Marabh, who is on the FBI's watch list of suspects or potential witnesses related to the bombings.
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