Last moments on Flight 175 revealed
Scotsman | March 10 2004
PASSENGERS on board one of the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Centre during the 11 September terror attacks were planning to tackle their hijackers, according to new details of the plane’s final moments that emerged yesterday.
The widow of one of the passengers on board United Airlines Flight 175 said her Gulf war veteran husband telephoned his mother after the plane was hijacked.
Julie Sweeney said her husband, Brian, told his mother: "I might have to hang up quickly, we’re going to try to do something about this."
It had previously been thought that only passengers on Flight 93, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, fought against the terrorists.
It will probably never be known if the passengers on Flight 175 managed to attack the hijackers.
The aircraft struck the south tower of the World Trade Centre a few minutes after Mr Sweeney’s call to his mother.
Ms Sweeney said: "He always stated that family came first and in the face of death he called me, he called his mother, and the next priority was trying to save everyone around him.
"I believe he and other people on the plane were trying to do something, but I believe it was just too late."
Meanwhile, a lawyer for the only man convicted over the 11 September attacks said yesterday he had applied for his client’s release from jail pending a retrial ordered by an appeal court.
Moroccan-born Mounir El Motassadeq, sentenced to 15 years in jail in February 2003 for conspiring to murder nearly 3,000 people in the attacks, had his conviction quashed last week by Germany’s supreme court.
"He must be set free. I have applied for him to be released and I am very confident he will be," said Josef Graessle-Muenscher, a member of Motassadeq’s legal team. |
