Holly Ratchford still can not believe that the man who moved into the residential advanced she once managed would go on to be accused of involvement in the darkest day in latest US historical past.
“It’s almost impossible for me to wrap my head around who he said he was, and who he really is. I still struggle with that,” she tells the BBC.
The man, Omar al-Bayoumi – a Saudi in his early 40s – moved to the advanced in San Diego, California, with his household in September 1999.
The new resident at quantity 152 Parkwood Apartments rapidly grew to become a common at Ratchford’s pool events. “He was always so bubbly and smiling,” she recollects, “and just very, very friendly.”
A few months later, Bayoumi would introduce Ratchford to two apparently unassuming, “polite” males, who would also become her neighbours.
The pair would become notorious for hijacking American Airlines flight 77, and crashing it into the Pentagon, in the 9/11 attacks.
Ratchford has been haunted by her connection to these three males for the previous 25 years. She feels she was taken in by Bayoumi from the begin.
“Whenever I had parties he would come and be a part of the activities,” she recollects, including that his household would invite her in for food.
“I enjoyed going over.”
But Bayoumi, the one-time resident of 152 Parkwood, is now at the centre of the $1 trillion (£733bn) lawsuit introduced against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by several thousand households of victims and as effectively as survivors of 9/11.
On 11 September 2001, 4 passenger plane were hijacked by 19 members of the Islamist extremist community, al-Qaeda. In addition to the crash at the Pentagon – the US navy’s headquarters close to Washington DC – two planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, inflicting both buildings to collapse. A fourth crashed in a discipline in Pennsylvania, following resistance from passengers on board.
In all, virtually 3,000 people were killed, including about 300 firefighters and other emergency staff at the World Trade Center.
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