Two Arab suspects in the US attacks who were traced back to Boston's Logan International Airport have been identified as Wa'el Mohammad al-Shihri and Ahmad Ibrahim Ali al-Hazzouni, Abu Dhabi public television said Wednesday.
The television also said the pair carried Saudi passports, apparently rejecting a report in The Boston Herald newspaper that said US officials had identified five Arab suspects and that two of them had United Arab Emirates (UAE) passports.
The newspaper quoted sources close to the police investigation in Massachusetts as saying the two UAE passport holders were brothers, and that one of them was a trained pilot.
US authorities also seized a car filled with Arabic-language flight training manuals from the airport, where two jetliners took off and later leveled the World Trade Center's twin towers, the paper said.
However, the television station in the UAE said the two identified suspects were also carrying UAE international driving licenses.
It was unclear from the television report if the two named men were the suspect brothers named in the US reports, as they have different family names.
At least two other suspects flew to Logan Tuesday from Portland, Maine, where authorities believe they had traveled after crossing over from Canada, according to the report.
A UAE official later told AFP that contacts were under way between Abu Dhabi and Washington to "clarify information that appeared in an American newspaper to the effect that two brothers from the UAE were among five suspects" in the terror attacks.
"We are in contact with the US administration, but the two sides have no proof that either of the suspects was aboard one of the planes," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In Washington, US Attorney General John Ashcroft denied reports that the FBI had made any arrests, instead saying that in the process of investigating, the agency had found people "out of status" who had been detained on immigration charges.
He said the FBI had found evidence of "the presence at some point in time, of either the hijackers themselves or their associates" in Boston, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; and Miami, Florida -- ABU DHABI (AFP)
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