Ameer Bukhari

Ameer Bukhari
Born	Ameer Abbas Bukhari
Died	September 11, 2000 St. Lucie County International Airport, Fort Pierce, Florida, USA
Cause of death	Aviation accident
Nationality	Saudi
Ethnicity	Arab
Known for	Wrongly accused of being a 9/11 hijacker
Spouse(s)	Lina Makki
Children	1

Ameer Abbas Bukhari (امیر عباس البخاری, Āmīr ʿAbbās al-Bukhārī) 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 wrongfully accused of being one of the hijackers.

Biography

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

Bukhari had a wife, Lina Makki, and a 7-year old daughter named Tala.

Death

Bukhari 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 was performed on Bukhari 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.

Bukhari 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 Mohamed Atta had rented and left in an airport parking lot.

As Bukhari's true fate was discovered he was cleared. However, because his place of graduation, FlightSafety Academy was 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 Bukhari's death, and carried out the attacks on the one-year anniversary of his death. However, Adnan was later also cleared of any wrongdoing concerning the 9/11 attacks.

At the time of the attacks, Bukhari's widow and daughter were sacrificing a lamb in Jeddah to give to the poor to commemorate the anniversary of his death