Dubai | Wednesday
THE United Arab Emirates and the United States have no evidence that any UAE nationals were aboard hijacked planes that smashed into US buildings on Tuesday, a UAE government source said on Wednesday.
The source said the UAE had been in touch with Washington over a report in a US newspaper that two brothers among five Arabs identified as suspects in the attack on New York’s World Trade Center carried UAE passports.
”Neither government has found any evidence of the presence of any UAE national among the victims of any of the planes involved in these horrendous crimes,” the source said.
”The UAE authorities have made contacts with officials of the US administration to seek clarifications of a report in a US paper that two persons with passports allegedly ‘traced to the UAE’ had been connected with one of the planes involved in yesterday’s criminal attacks in Washington and New York,” the source added.
The Boston Herald newspaper on Wednesday quoted an unidentified source as saying authorities in Massachusetts had identified five Arab men as suspects in Tuesday’s attack and had seized a rental car containing Arabic-language flight training manuals at Boston’s Logan International Airport.
Two of the men were brothers whose passports were traced to the UAE, the unidentified source told the Herald. One of the men was a trained pilot, the paper reported on its Web site.
The paper said investigators suspected the two brothers were aboard hijacked United Airlines flight 175, which pilot union officials said was one of two aircraft that hit the World Trade Center. Another hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon just outside Washington.
UAE Information and Culture Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zaid al-Nahayan on Tuesday denounced the ”criminal and horrifying” attacks, saying they ”necessitate a strong and comprehensive international campaign to eradicate terrorism in all its forms”.
UAE President Sheikh Zaid bin Sultan al-Nahayan also extended condolences to US President George W Bush and the American people. – Reuters