Boston, MA – The five terrorists who boarded United Airlines Flight 175 in Boston on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, passed through a security checkpoint that was staffed by some screeners who could not speak or understand English, did not know who Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda were, and, in one case, could not identify what Mace was, according to new court documents.
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The documents, which include details not previously made public, were filed on Friday by lawyers for the family of Mark Bavis, a 31-year-old passenger on Flight 175, in the only remaining wrongful-death lawsuit out of nearly 100 filed after the attacks.
The documents, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, offer the most comprehensive look yet at what the lawsuit contends were failures by United and a security firm that ran the checkpoint used by the terrorists at Logan International Airport.
“This document demonstrates that 9/11 was completely preventable at the checkpoint for this flight, and that United did not live up to its responsibilities for security,” Donald A. Migliori, a lawyer for the family, said.
The case against United and the security firm, Huntleigh USA, is scheduled for trial in November, and the presiding judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein, has said that he will probably allow Mr. Bavis’s mother, Mary, the plaintiff, to seek damages for her son’s pain and suffering – what the judge called “terror damages” – during the final 21 minutes of the flight.
It was during those minutes that the hijackers used knives, Mace and the threat of a bomb to take control of the plane, killing the pilots, stabbing a flight attendant, and flying the plane erratically as it headed for the World Trade Center, the suit says.
The new filing, which includes, for example, excerpts of confidential depositions of screeners, responds to a defense motion last month that asked Judge Hellerstein to dismiss the case.
Unbelievable, that this could’ve been prevented by airport employees
It is unbelievable that in this country we don’t impose the minimum standard for employment and that is that employees speak the language of the land; especially in the most critical jobs. The people responsible for hiring these agents should definitely be held accountable.
I actually find it hard to believe that these terrorists knew about this fact and thus risked it.
I was flying out of EWR a month ago and asked security a simple question in English and they couldn’t answer it. I was disheartened.
Was mace allowed on a plane befor 9/11?
I wouldn’t be surprised if those screeners were illegal aliens (undocumented citizens, as the libs would call it) working under a fictios name.
I feel bad for all those families that lost loved ones on that terrible day and we can never forget what happened. On the other hand “No silver bullet could have prevented it”, we simply never imagined such evil terror can take place. We all thought it was a gas explosion or plane crash by accident until the 2nd followed by 3rd and 4th plane crashed. Its surely wrong if airport screeners don’t speak English but nothing would have prevented it. Our brains were simply not programmed to comprehend and to pick up on such terror in the Pre 9-11 world. Now things are completely different. May we only hear Besiros Tovos
To this day, I am still in the dark about an elementary issue- how could it have been possible that the civil defense force of such an advanced country could not thwart such an attack? Why weren’t airforce defense planes made operative at the first notice of the aircraft approaching a non-scheduled direction and be given the command to shoot down the planes before becoming a civil tragedy?
thats coz all our leadership wants is to farm out jobs to those who take the lowest pay.
you get what you pay for in most cases.
How did they get their jobs?? What fool hired them??
To #8 -Sol- The fact of the matter is (and it was documented by the 9/11 Commisison report), the attacks could have been prevented if there had been better coordination and sharing of information between the FBI and the CIA. Planes had been hijacked in the USA since the early 1960 217;s, and the Government, which initially authorized sky marshalls to ride on commercial aircraft, removed them. The CIA knew of the existence of and the identity of several of the 9/11 hijackers, but never told the FBI that they entered the USA. The airlines were never informed by the FAA of the severity of the situation. The FBI, which knew that Arabs were taking flying lessons in simulators, never followed up. It is a shame that those who were clearly negligent prior to 9/11, were never held accountable, and fired!