By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:22 PM on 8th September 2011
It's a sprawling piece of real estate with a dark secret: It may have been a haven for bloodthirsty terrorists.
The sudden disappearance of the home’s Saudi residents before September 11 prompted calls to authorities, who found links to those who orchestrated the horrific attacks of that morning.
Days before the tenth anniversary of the worst terror strike on American soil, new light is being shed on the home, and its ties to the tragedy.
The Miami Herald reported the home was owned at the time by Esam Ghazzawi, a financier and interior designer, and his wife Deborah.
Also living at the opulent house was Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and his wife Anoud, Ghazzawi’s daughter. The home was sold in 2003.
Days before September 11, 2001, the Saudi family and their small children hurriedly vacated in a white van, leaving brand new cars in the garage, a fridge full of food and closets filled with clothes.
Their sudden departure irked Larry Berberich, senior administrator and security officer of the gated community, who reported the exodus.
Ironically, Mr Berberich, an advisor to the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, was with the group that received President Bush during his visit to the school where he was famously told of the terror attacks on the morning of September 11.
That same morning, neighbour Patrick Gallagher emailed the FBI to report what he felt was suspicious behaviour by the family.
In an investigation that began weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the FBI reportedly found several links to the hijackers who carried them out.
When authorities pulled the records of phone calls to and from the home, they made a shocking discovery.
The numbers belonged to more than a dozen suspected terrorists, including the 9/11 hijackers.
A check on the logs of those entering the gated community prior to the attacks found a car belonging to Mohammed Atta, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11.
Another car entering was linked to Ziad Samir Jarrah, a hijacker of United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed just outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Jarrah received flight training about a block away from the house at the Florida Flight Training, the Herald reported.
Another phone number linked to the home was that of Adnan Shukrijumah, who is believed to have been with Atta in the spring of 2001.
Shukrijumah, who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, remains on the loose.
The FBI was able to trace Ghazzawi's route back to Riyadh, with a stopover at a property he owned in Arlington, Virginia, before boarding a flight to Heathrow Airport on the way to Saudi Arabia.
An unnamed counterterrorism agent told the paper that Ghazzawi and al-Hiijjii were on an FBI watch list and a U.S. agency tracking terrorist funds was interested in both men even before 9/11.
Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, said he was surprised he wasn’t told about the probe of the Escondito Circle home at the time - even though he was especially alert to information pertaining to Florida.
Despite that, the inquiry was able to gather a massive file on the hijackers in the United States, and it was turned it over to the 9/11 Commission.
But Sen Graham said the Commission 'did very little with it, and their reference to Saudi Arabia is almost cryptic sometimes.
'I never got a good answer as to why they did not pursue that.'
No comments:
Post a Comment