Ameer Bukhari

Infobox Person
name = Ameer Bukhari
birth_name = Ameer Abbas Bukhari
death_date = September 11, 2000
death_place = St. Lucie County International Airport, Fort Pierce, Florida, USA
death_cause = Aviation accident
nationality = Saudi
ethnicity = Arab
known_for = Wrongly accused of being a 9/11 hijacker
religion = Muslim
spouse = Lina Makki
children = 1

Ameer Abbas Bukhari (امیر البخاری) was initially reported by CNN to be one of the hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 as part of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and was mistakenly referenced as being the brother of Adnan Bukhari - another man accused of being one of the hijackers.

Biography

Ameer held a first-class medical certificate issued May 16, 2000 and also held a private pilot's license from the Philippines.

Ameer had a wife- Lina Makki and also a young daughter called Tala who was born around 1994.

Death

Ameer was killed exactly a year before the 9/11 attacks, on September 11, 2000, in a midair collision between his Piper Cherokee N9208N and the Piper Aztec N54235 being piloted by Roger Boromei, as both approached the same runway at St. Lucie County International Airport in Fort Pierce, Florida - both aircraft ended up crashing in a nearby citrus grove. At the time of the crash, he had logged 17.5 hours flight-time since graduating from the FlightSafety Academy in Vero Beach, Florida.

An autopsy on Ameer was performed at the Florida Office of Medical Examiners at District 19 in Fort Pierce, Florida. The forensic toxicology was performed by the FAA Toxicology and Accident Research Laboratory, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The tests were negative for drugs and alcohol, as they were for the other pilot as well. The wreckage of the Cherokee was returned to Don Doohen, the maintenance director at the FlightSafety Academy that owned the plane.

Ameer was cleared of any fault in the post-incident report, which blamed the air controller who had started his shift three minutes earlier.

9/11 Attacks

It was initially reported that his name had been found inside the blue Nissan that Mohammed Atta had rented and left in an airport parking lot.

As Ameer's true fate was discovered he was cleared. However, his place of graduation- FlightSafety Academy, being where several of the actual hijackers were also reported to have trained, media speculation, still assuming he was the brother of Adnan, suggested that the latter may have blamed the airline industry for his 'brother's death, and carried out the attacks on the one-year anniversary of his death.

At the time of the attacks, Ameer's widow, Lina Makki, and 7-year old daughter, Tala, were sacrificing a lamb in Jeddah to give to the poor to commemorate the anniversary of his death [ [http://web.archive.org/web/20020306051318/ web.archive.org] ] [ [http://www.flightsafetyacademy.com/mistakes.htm flightsafetyacademy.com] ]

References