Khalid al-Mihdhar (16 May 1975-11 September 2001) was an al-Qaeda member from Afghanistan who was one of the 9/11 hijackers.
Biography[]
Khalid al-Mihdhar was born on 16 May 1975 in Mecca, Saudi Arabia to a prominent Sunni Muslim Arab family related to the Quraysh clan of Mecca. Friends with Nawaf al-Hazmi, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi both fought in the Bosnian Mujahideen during the Bosnian War before being trained by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1990s. In 1998, he was one of the suspects in the embassy bombings in East Africa, and he attended the 2000 al-Qaeda leadership summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with his friend Nawaf al-Hazmi, where the leadership planned out terrorist attacks against the United States. He was one of the men committed to taking part in the terror attacks against the American homeland, and he was associated with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. al-Mihdhar and Hazmi were supposed to be pilots during the 9/11 attacks, but they spoke poor English and did not do well in flight lessons in San Diego, paid for by Saudi agent Omar al-Bayoumi. al-Mihdhar wound up being a muscle hijacker on American Airlines Flight 77, helping in its hijacking and its subsequent crash into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia as the penultimate attack on 11 September 2001.
Gallery[]
