M A I N   N E W S

5 Arabs identified as suspects; Boston hotel raided

Boston, September 12
Security officials in the US state of Massachusetts have identified at least five Arab men as suspects in the latest terrorist attacks in Washington and New York, seizing a car laden with Arabic-language flight training manuals, The Boston Herald reported today.

Two of the men, whose passports were traced to the UAE, were brothers, one of whom was a trained pilot, the paper said, quoting sources close to the investigation.

At least two other suspects flew to Boston’s Logan International Airport yesterday from Portland, Maine, where authorities believed they had travelled after crossing over from Canada, according to the report.

Once in the air, the hijackers in one plane began killing flight attendants in order to lure a pilot from the cockpit and seize the plane, the newspaper reported.

There was no indication whether those events took place on the American Airlines flight that originated at Logan, or on the United Airlines flight.

Both planes ploughed into the World Trade Center roughly an hour after they departed from Boston.

The suspects had no guns, but they used shaving kits and other carry-on luggage to smuggle knife-like weapons, according to the report.

Investigators in Boston have found a copy of the Koran, a videotape on how to fly commercial jets and a fuel consumption calculator in a pair of bags meant for American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the World Trade Center on Tuesday, the Boston Globe reported on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, 50 heavily-armed local and federal law enforcement officers today stormed Westin Hotel in Copley Square in Boston, presumably investigating a lead linked to the attacks on Washington and New York a day earlier.

Unconfirmed local media reports suggest that five persons linked to the hijacking of two commercial airplanes that left Boston bound for Los Angeles yesterday had been registered at the hotel.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation, hoping to match names of suspects against hotel registries, saw five Arab surnames on the Westin’s manifest that matched the names of people they suspected in the attacks, local media reported.

Some 20 minutes after entering the hotel, the teams exited, and suggested the ever-larger crowd of onlookers disperse. They were not seen to be carrying any evidence. PTI, AFP 

Taliban urge USA not to attack Afghanistan

New Delhi, September 12
Afghanistan’s Taliban regime tonight pleaded with the USA not to attack their country in retaliation for the terrorist strikes in New York and Washington yesterday.

The appeal came after some Pakistani diplomats met senior Taliban officials in Kabul, the CNN television network reported from the Afghan capital.

CNN correspondent Nic Robertson said in Kabul the meeting between the Pakistani diplomats and the Taliban officials was inconclusive, but late in the night the Taliban regime condemned the terrorist attacks. PTI

IB, RAW chiefs talk to FBI officials
Rajeev Sharma
Tribune News Service

Meanwhile, the Pakistani establishment has seen to it that Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed denies responsibility for the attacks as claimed earlier in the day through a faxed statement by a Lashkar spokesman in the Karachi office of a western news agency. But despite this denial, common Pakistanis have virtually exploded with spontaneous joy as such reports have come here from Aappara market and Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.