Hijackers abandoned flight manuals at motel

Associated Press

MIAMI – A motel owner said he found Boeing 757 manuals, three illustrated martial arts books and an 8-inch stack of East Coast flight maps while cleaning out an alleged hijacker’s room two days before he flew into the World Trade Center.

Marwan Al-Shehhi and another Arab man spent a week at the Panther Motel in Deerfield Beach, and they had a constant visitor, owner Richard Surma said Saturday. Surma said he recognized Al-Shehhi from FBI photographs, but not the other two men.

Of the 19 hijackers, at least 15 have Florida ties, and seven of them were believed to be pilots. Al-Shehhi, who trained at two Florida flight schools, was aboard the United Boeing 767 that crashed into the south tower Tuesday.

Surma kept many of the items from the room and called a sheriff’s deputy Wednesday, when officers began scouring the oceanfront strip of small motels 12 miles north of Fort Lauderdale. The FBI quickly followed, interviewing guests and lifting fingerprints from Al-Shehhi’s room.

Al-Shehhi checked out Sept. 9 without taking a three-ring binder full of handwritten notes, an English-German dictionary, an airplane fuel tester, a protractor, tote bag, aircraft manuals, maps and books, Surma said.

“They were aeronautical maps. I’m sure it was almost half of the eastern United States,” he said.

Hundreds of FBI agents are rebuilding the history of the hijackers from a paper trail of flight school records; house, apartment and hotel rental records; credit card receipts and interviews with pilots, landlords, neighbors and bartenders.

Investigators were pursuing about 1,000 leads in Florida, said Judy Orihuela, an FBI spokeswoman in Miami.

Associated Press