Satam al-Suqami

Satam al Suqami was a Saudi law student and one of five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11 as part of the September 11 attacks.

Suqami had been a law student until he was recruited into al-Qaeda along with Majed Moqed, another hijacker, and traveled to Afghanistan where he would be chosen to participate in the 9/11 attacks.

He arrived in the United States in April 2001. On September 11, 2001, Suqami boarded American Airlines Flight 11 and participated in the hijacking of the plane so that it could be crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center as part of the coordinated attacks.

On September 10, 2001, Suqami shared a room at the Milner Hotel in Boston with three of the Flight 175 hijackers, Marwan Al-Shehhi, Fayez Banihammad, and Mohand al-Shehri.

On the day of the attacks, Suqami checked in at the flight desk using his Saudi passport, and boarded American Airlines Flight 11. At Logan International Airport, he was selected by CAPPS,[6] which required his checked bags to undergo extra screening for explosives and involved no extra screening at the passenger security checkpoint.[7]

An FAA memo, circulated in February 2002, claimed that Suqami shot passenger Daniel M. Lewin (Seat 9B), co-founder of Akamai Technologies and a former member of the Israeli Sayeret Matkal, for attempting to foil the hijacking.[citation needed] While based on the frantic phonecall received from a stewardess of the flight, the report has been a matter of some controversy, since both the FAA and FBI have strongly denied the presence of firearms smuggled aboard. It is now believed that Suqami stabbed Lewin as he attempted to intervene in the hijacking[citation needed]

Suqami's passport was found by a passerby (identity unknown), reportedly in the vicinity of Vesey Street,[8] before the towers collapsed.[9] (This was mistakenly reported by many news outlets to be Mohamed Atta's passport.)[citation needed][10] A columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian expressed incredulity about the authenticity of this report,[11] questioning whether a paper passport could survive the inferno unsinged when the plane's black boxes were never found. According to testimony before the 9/11 Commission by lead counsel Susan Ginsburg, his passport had been "manipulated in a fraudulent manner in ways that have been associated with al Qaeda."[9] Passports belonging to Ziad Jarrah and Saeed al-Ghamdi were found at the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 as well as an airphone.