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CNN Live At Daybreak
America's New War: Family of One Suspect Say He's no Terrorist
Aired September 18, 2001 - 07:15 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Right now we want to check in with Brent Sadler, who joins us from the Bekka Valley. He has exclusive video of one of the suspects linked to the hijacking of United Flight 93 that ended up crashing in Pennsylvania -- Brent, good morning.
BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thank you, Paula.
We've just been able to access video taken back in September, 6, 1998, so some three years ago. And from these pictures you can see Ziad Jarrah, the 26-year-old Lebanese citizen who is one of the suspects aboard that United Flight 93, which went down in Pennsylvania about 80 miles from Pittsburgh.
Now the family here, who are being very open towards all media, not just the Lebanese media, but Western media, are saying quite clearly from their accounts here that as far as they're concerned, they do not believe, regardless of what is coming out of investigating authorities in the United States and Germany, that Ziad Jarrah could have led a double life, on the one hand being the kind of regular guy, they say, who sometimes drank, enjoyed going to nightclubs, had a girlfriend, a German of Turkish ethnic origin who he was planning to marry, could possibly have changed or have been got at somehow by an Islamic fundamentalist group and changed him from the man they knew into somebody who could commit theses atrocious terrorist actions.
In fact, the family are repeatedly denouncing the actions in the United States, repeatedly denouncing the type of terrorist action that Osama bin Laden is accused of being involved in. And as I say, they're helping through limited resources in terms of information on their own account to try and piece together the kind of man that Ziad Jarrah was.
As things stand now, they do not even accept that he was actually on board the aircraft, although many indications point to the fact that he was. They do say that they believe the United States authorities are weighing too heavily on what they say was some unreliable information that came out from the German prosecutor's office. Specifically, they say that Ziad Jarrah did not attend the same technical university in Hamburg that was studied at by the two other suspects, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi.
So the family, while continuing to be in a state of shock, are saying that as far as they're concerned, there is not enough hard evidence to prove that their Ziad Jarrah -- and they're raising the possibility that there may have been a second Ziad Jarrah in the United States because they have shown Germans an apartment lease which mentions another similar named person, Ziad Jarrah having taken an apartment in New York City before Ziad Jarrah even left this country.
So they have pointed to many discrepancies in the information that's emerging and they're continuing to stick by their line that as far as they're concerned, it's too premature to say that Ziad Jarrah from Lebanon was one of the hijackers aboard United Flight 93. Back to you, Paula.
ZAHN: So, Brent, we continue to look at this picture of the man who is being described as a suspect in the downing of Flight 93, United Flight 93. Based on what you're saying about the cooperation of the family, it appears as though their sole motivation is to get this investigation broadened.
SADLER: Indeed. The uncle, Jamal Jarrah, who is the lead figure in the family here, has been cooperating, he tells me, with the Lebanese authorities. He has been in touch with the United States embassy here in Beirut, which remains open, and all the family from the mother, the father, the sisters, the cousins, they've all been talking to us today.
And they're painting a picture of a man who came to Beirut only in February of this year and was attending surgery at a hospital not far from here where his father was undergoing treatment for a heart condition, a serious heart condition, and even the medical authorities there are saying that there was nothing unusual in the behavior of Ziad Jarrah to lead them to believe that he had turned into some sort of Islamic fundamentalist who might have turned into the kind of individual who would have attacked or wanted to attack the United States of America.
But there have been some reports in the Arabic press here, two newspapers, that some people from this village of Amaj (ph) in the eastern Bekka Valley have seen Ziad Jarrah with a beard and talking in an Islamic way, as it was described here. But that's being disputed by other sources, particularly the hospital where Samia Jarrah (ph), the father of Ziad, was having surgery in February.
And the family has also, just a short time ago, brought out a photograph which they say was taken of Ziad Jarrah just in December -- January of this year, which shows him with his cousins, seven of the latest from his family, looking as he's always looked, with spectacles, as you saw in that picture back in '98 when he was dancing with relatives here at the wedding of one of his cousins.
He hadn't changed very much other than growing a few years older, put on a little weight. As far as his family is concerned, no way, they say, he could have led a double life and they detected no change in his psychological patterns or his behavioral appearances either at home or in the way he communicated with the family over the past two years. So that's the situation from here in the Bekka. Paula.
ZAHN: Brent Sadler, thanks so much for that report. And a little bit later on this morning we will try to show you how the developments Brent just reported fit into the larger investigative picture.
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