certificate, issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in April 1999.
He then returned to Saudi Arabia.
his family he was going to the United Arab Emirates to work for an airline.
Where Hanjour actually traveled during this time period is unknown. It is pos-
sible he went to the training camps in Afghanistan.
Tucson or lived in Tucson in the 1980s and early 1990s.
have also raised suspicion.
tion training. It is clear that when Hanjour lived in Arizona in the 1990s, he
associated with several individuals holding extremist beliefs who have been the
subject of counterterrorism investigations. Some of them trained with Han-
jour to be pilots. Others had apparent connections to al Qaeda, including train-
ing in Afghanistan.
identified in al Qaeda's al Faruq camp as a trained pilot, on the basis of back-
ground information he had provided. Hanjour had been at a camp in
Afghanistan for a few weeks when Bin Ladin or Atef apparently realized that
he was a trained pilot; he was told to report to KSM, who then trained Han-
jour for a few days in the use of code words.
in the UAE. Hanjour did go to the UAE, but to meet facilitator Ali Abdul
Aziz Ali.
destination was an English as a second language program in Oakland, Califor-
nia, which he had scheduled before leaving Saudi Arabia but never attended.
Instead, as mentioned earlier, he joined Nawaf al Hazmi in San Diego.
zona Aviation. He wanted to train on multi-engine planes, but had difficulties
because his English was not good enough.The instructor advised him to dis-
continue but Hanjour said he could not go home without completing the
training. In early 2001, he started training on a Boeing 737 simulator at Pan
Am International Flight Academy in Mesa.An instructor there found his work
well below standard and discouraged him from continuing.Again, Hanjour per-