UK police arrest Algerian pilot

By ANDREW LAXON and AGENCIES

British police have arrested a man in London who allegedly learned to fly with the suicide pilot who crashed into the Pentagon.

Scotland Yard has been questioning the 27-year-old man, his wife, aged 25, and a man in his 40s from Birmingham since Friday (British time) in connection with the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The pilot's 29-year-old brother was also arrested and released over the weekend.

British police have not named the three suspects, but the BBC said the pilot was Lofti Raissi, an Algerian who was studying to upgrade his flying qualifications to jets.

The News of the World said Raissi's French wife, Sonia, worked on the Air France customer service desk at Heathrow Airport.

The newspaper said Noor, the wife of Raissi's brother, Mohammed, protested the family's innocence.

"When they raided our home it was like a dream. They told Mohammed he was being arrested for what happened in New York.

"But this is a good family with good values. We are not terrorists."

The Associated Press news agency said the pilot had trained at the same Arizona flying school and at the same time as Hani Hanjour, who investigators believe flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

T. Gerald Chilton jun, a corporate officer for CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, said Hani Hanjour received pilot training there for three months in 1996, and in December 1997.

He put down a cash deposit towards additional training in 1997, but did not attend more classes.

Authorities throughout Europe and the United States made a slew of arrests in the terrorist investigation over the weekend.

Newly released documents showed that US authorities have detained dozens of people from Middle East countries who had violated immigration rules. They are being questioned. Some entered the country in the days around the suicide hijackings.

German officials issued arrest warrants for two men charged with forming a terrorist organisation and at least 5000 counts of murder. In the warrants, prosecutors named Ramzi Binalshibh, aged 29, of Yemen, and Said Bahaji, 26, a German of Moroccan origin.

Both are suspected of helping to plot the attacks on New York and Washington with Mohammed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi and Ziad Jarrah, three ringleaders of the attack who lived for a time in Hamburg.

Authorities in France arrested seven in connection with an alleged plot to target US sites there, and Belgian police arrested two men and seized a huge store of chemicals in their Brussels flat.

Canadian authorities are holding a man who was trying to fly to Chicago with an illegal passport and airline uniforms on the day of the hijacking attacks.

Court documents unsealed on Friday said the man, Nageeb Abdul Jabar Mohamed Alhadi, was on a Lufthansa flight from Germany to O'Hare International Airport when it was diverted to Toronto because of the hijackings.

Alhadi, a contract employee for the German airline, was travelling with a ticket under a different name and carried three passports from Yemen, two of which had names different from his.

He was charged with possessing and attempting to use a false passport. US authorities plan to file extradition papers.

Investigators want to question Alhadi, although officials said they have no information that he is linked to the attacks.

Meanwhile, officials have confirmed that box-cutting tools like those used by hijackers were found on airliners grounded by the September 11 attacks.

This could indicate that attackers planned to commandeer more than the four planes that crashed into the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and a field in western Pennsylvania.

The Washington Post said the tools were found under adjoining seat cushions on a flight that originated in Boston, and in the trash bin of a plane bound for Brussels from Atlanta.

Before the attacks, federal regulations allowed knives with blades up to 10cm, although state and local laws could be more restrictive.

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