Where Were the al-Ghamdi Brothers, Hijackers of United 175, Born?

by Leonardo Salvaggio and Sean Russell (Beyond Ground Zero). An Italian version of this article is available here.

Although the biographies of the nineteen hijackers have been meticulously reconstructed by investigators, at least one aspect remains unclear. There is still uncertainty about the names of the locations where the al-Ghamdi brothers were born, two of the muscle hijackers on United Flight 175, which crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

Both were born in the al-Baha province, a rural area in southern Saudi Arabia from which eight of the fifteen Saudi hijackers originated. However, doubts arise about the exact name of the town or village, although it should first be noted that these are, of course, transliterations from Arabic and every transliteration is problematic.

Source: CIA 11 September: The Plot and the Plotters

According to the document 11 September: The Plot and the Plotters, published by the CIA in 2012, the two were born in the locations of:

• Alamarassa for Ahmed al-Ghamdi
• Ajandam for Hamza al-Ghamdi

However, neither of these names appears to exist outside of this document. The birthplace of Ahmed al-Ghamdi also appears with different spellings in other documents; in the summary about him produced by the FBI, the place name is also written as Almarrassa (without the second "a" and with two "r"s), and in one of the documents of the 9/11 Commission it is also written as Alamarrisa. In the visa application, the spelling is different again and appears as Almarassa.

In any case, none of these toponyms (at least in the Latin alphabet) seems to correspond to a real place, and a Google search only returns results directly related to the hijacker documents.

We can only speculate as to why: the most likely explanation is that it is a small village for which no transliteration has been used in other contexts. In any case, help from anyone familiar with Saudi toponymy is welcome to help us clarify this gray area.