Orlando Airport Officer Honored for Turning Back 20th Hijacker

Posted on Tue, Feb. 24, 2004 

Orlando Airport Officer Honored for Turning Back 20th
Hijacker
Associated Press


WASHINGTON - Inconsistent answers. No return plane
ticket. Those were some of the things that made
immigration officer Jose Melendez-Perez feel that
"something was not right" one August day 2 1/2 years
ago as he questioned a man traveling from Dubai, who
just arrived in the United States.

The man, Mohamed al-Qahtani, whom U.S. authorities
stopped at Florida's Orlando International Airport on
Aug. 4, 2001, was put back on a plane out of the
country. U.S. officials would later come to believe
that al-Qahtani may have planned to be the 20th Sept.
11 hijacker.

Melendez-Perez, now a U.S. Customs and Border
Protection officer, was honored Tuesday by Customs
commissioner Robert Bonner for his actions that day
and was given a $5,000 cash award. Bonner credited
Melendez-Perez's probing questions and instincts with
leading U.S. authorities to refuse al-Qahtani's entry
into the United States, even though he traveled on a
genuine Saudi passport and a valid U.S. visa.

Melendez-Perez said he became suspicious when
al-Qahtani provided vague and inconsistent answers to
questions about his purpose for being in the United
States and couldn't explain why he didn't have a plane
ticket to leave.

"I told myself, something was not right,"
Melendez-Perez said in an interview with The
Associated Press.

Melendez-Perez, 58, joined the Immigration and
Naturalization Service in 1992 after 26 years of
service in the U.S. military. Immigration inspectors
became part of Customs and Border Protection last
March 1 as part of a massive government shuffling that
created the new Homeland Security Department.

"You are, without a doubt, a tremendous asset to CBP,
an agency whose priority mission is to prevent
terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering our
country," Bonner told Melendez-Perez.

Melendez-Perez said that when authorities had escorted
al-Qahtani to the plane to leave the country he said
something along the lines of "I'll be back."

Al-Qahtani eventually wound up in Afghanistan, where
he was captured by U.S. forces. He now is being held
with other captives at the U.S. naval base at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
 

  

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