5 More People Arrested As Suspects

The U.S. sources reported yesterday that 10 people of two groups, who had allegedly conspired to hijack two airplanes for terrorist activities, were arrested in New York.

5 additional persons arrested in New York: The investigation agencies arrested 4 men and 1 woman at the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York right after the resumption of the flight of private airlines at 4-5 p.m. Sep. 13. They made a reservation for a flight from New York to Los Angeles on 11th but could not take the plane due to the cancellation of the flight by the World Trade Center terror.

4 of them ran away when they were requested to identify themselves at an airport in New York. In advance, 5 people were arrested in the LaGuardia International Airport on Sep 11. They had knives, forged pilot Ids, and air tickets with open destination.

For the arrest operation of the suspects, the three airports in New York were ordered to suspend the landing about 5:30 p.m.

18 terrorists: the Federal Bureau of Intelligence revealed that total 18 terrorists hijacked the four airplanes for the terrorist attack.

The Washington Post reported that 5 terrorists respectively were on board the American Airlines 11 and the United Airline 175, which departed from Boston and hit the World Trade Center, and 4 terrorists took the planes of UA 93 and AA 77 respectively. And at least one hijacker who had a pilot train boarded on each plane.

Some of the hijackers who had resided in Florida sent their families to the Middle East in a hurry right before the terrorist activity, leaving behind their household goods. The FBI thinks that one suspect from Virginia or Florida seems like a son of a rich Saudi Arabian diplomat. The Department of Justice said that an assistant of the terror delivered himself to the police and provided useful information.

Cooperation in the Investigation from the world: The French Prosecutors Office and the Intelligence Agency set for the investigation on the possibility of the connections of the armed Muslim sectarians in France to the terrorist activity against the U.S. Previously, the U.S. requested information about a French from Algeria, who come to Boston for the pilot training. He was arrested for the charge of holding forged passport and later turned out to have visited Afghanistan several times.

The U.S. and the Philippine Joint investigation team raided the Bay View Hotel in Manila yesterday and arrested many suspected foreigners who possessed bombs. The joint team is investigating their connection to Osama bin Laden.

Recovery of the Black Boxes: A black box of the UA 93 that had clashed into the West Pennsylvania was found and its aviation recording equipment was sent to the National Transportation Security Bureau (NTSB).

The investigators are still searching for the voice data recording equipment on the crashed spot. The searching operation has been strengthening after detecting the signals from the black box of UA 77 that hit the Pentagon.

Released Suspects: the Bukari brothers from Saudi Arabia, who had been pointed as hijackers by the U.S. investigation team, were cleared from the suspect as terrorists. CNN reported that Adnan Bukari who lives in Florida passed the test of polygraph by the FBI and is currently cooperating in the investigation of the FBI. His brother Amir was killed by the flight clash last year.

Song Sang-Keun songmoon@donga.com