9/11 suspect 'resumed training' in New Zealand

[kookomula]

Wellington (dpa) - New Zealand has deported a Yemeni man said to be directly connected with the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, Immigration Minister David Cunliffe announced Saturday.

Cunliffe said Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali arrived in New Zealand in February and was deported to Saudi Arabia on May 29.

He had trained as a pilot in the US and was "building up his flying hours with an instructor" in the North Island city of Palmerston North, 140 kilometres from the capital Wellington, when he was arrested.

Cunliffe said he had used a variation of his name when applying to enter New Zealand and was only subsequently identified as having close connections to people involved in the September 11 attacks.

Four planes were hijacked on September 11, 2001, and crashed into New York's World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon near Washington and a field in Pennsylvania, killing 3,000 people.

Abdullah had been named in the September 11 Commission Report that investigated intelligence on the attacks. The report said he lived and trained in Phoenix, Arizona, with Saudi Hani Hanjour, who is believed to have piloted American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

Abdullah was said in the report to have been a leader at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Phoenix and reportedly gave extremist speeches at the mosque.

Cunliffe said he had been expelled from New Zealand for posing a risk to national security.

The Weekend Herald newspaper said Abdullah, 28, came to New Zealand on a student visa, saying his dream was to become a commercial airline pilot and that he needed an English language qualification.

After living for a while in Auckland, he moved to Palmerston North where he was getting flight training at the Manawatu Aero Club.

The Herald said police seized his flight logbook from the aero club, where he had flown several times in Cessna aircraft accompanied by instructors.

The paper said the short, clean-cut Muslim gave no indication of fundamanmentalist tendencies and told the club's chief flying officer, Captain Ravindra Singh, that he had obtained his private pilot's licence in the US, spending several years there before returning to Saudi Arabia to work in his father's textile business.

Abdullah told Singh he was born and raised in Saudi Arabia but travelled on a Yemeni passport because his father was from Yemen and Saudi Arabia had refused to give him citizenship.

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