A captured Al Qaeda operative says that a man from Montreal, who trained with the 9/11 hijackers in Afghanistan, was responsible for the downing of American Airlines flight 587 shortly after it took off from JFK November 12, 2001.
Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents were told during five days of interviews with the source that Abderraouf Jdey, a Canadian citizen also known as Farouk the Tunisian, had downed the plane with explosives on Nov. 12, 2001.Officials are still standing behind their assessment that the doomed plane crashed as the result of a tragic accident.The source claimed Jdey had used his Canadian passport to board Flight 587 and "conducted a suicide mission" with a small bomb similar to the one used by convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid, a "Top Secret" Canadian government report says.
Jdey, 39, came to Canada from Tunisia in 1991 and became a citizen in 1995. Shortly after getting his Canadian passport, he left for Afghanistan and trained with some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, according to the 9/11 commission in the United States.
He recorded a "martyrdom" video, but was dropped from the 9/11 mission after returning to Canada in the summer of 2001. The planner of the World Trade Center attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, claims Jdey was recruited for a "second wave" of suicide attacks.
American Airlines flight 587 descended into a Brooklyn neighborhood shortly after takeoff from Kennedy Airport, killing all 265 people aboard.
Posted by mhking at August 27, 2004 05:36 PMI was at JFK that morning - sitting in a plane waiting to pull away from the gate when 587 went down. On the way through the terminal, i gave directions to an elderly gentleman looking for that flight.
It is not a morning I shall ever forget.
Posted by: Stephen Macklin at August 28, 2004 08:40 AMA dear friend of mine, who has sinced passed, conveyed this to me regarding that downed flight. He was in the know because he worked on that specific maintenance line for AA, where that specific Airbus had received it's most recent heavy check. Based upon internal investigations done by AA and engineers, all vertical stabilizers of an Airbus A-300 is made of material that is not a metal alloy, as in most aircraft. There had been reports of small stress fractures on A-300's where the vertical stabilizer and fuselage where joined. And with regards to this particular aircraft the vertical stabilizer suffered a catastrophic clean break from the fuselage, sending the plane into an uncontrolled spin, into a queens neighborhood. Now whether this incident was a result of pilot error or aircraft vortices that is still somewhat of a mystery but in no way was this incident a direct result of terrorism.
Posted by: Willy at August 28, 2004 12:54 PM