THREE DAYS before Sept 11, 2001, Mohamed Atta, the man who piloted American Airlines flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre (WTC) in New York, wired out a total of US$7,860 from two grocery stores in Maryland. On Sept 10, Marwan al-Shehri sent US$5,400 from a Greyhound bus terminal in Boston before he commandeered United Airlines flight 175 the next day, crashing it into the WTC South Tower. In both cases, the recipient of the funds was a terrorist support network based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The events of Sept 11 are well known. And compared with the sheer tragedy of that fateful day, these transfers of a few thousand dollars would appear unremarkable and seemingly unrelated.
