Orlando airport inspector credited with denying entry to the 20th hijacker of 9/11 terrorist attacks
‘It was a gut feeling,’ Jose Melendez-Perez said
ORLANDO, Fla – Some might call it a hunch or an instinct, the supernatural moment that stops you in your tracks.
Jose Melendez-Perez knows the feeling. After all, it was a gut feeling Melendez-Perez had 20 years ago that some believe changed the course of history and saved thousands of lives.
“That day, as long as I live, I will remember how everything unfolded,” Melendez-Perez said.
Twenty years ago, weeks before the 9/11 attacks, on Aug. 4, 2001, Melendez-Perez was working as an immigration inspector at the Orlando International Airport conducting secondary screenings.
That day would have been otherwise uneventful, except on that day, Melendez-Perez met a man he says gave him ‘the chills.’
“The first thing that came to me was that he was a hitman,” Melendez-Perez said.
“He was well dressed, in all black, with a military haircut. He kept looking into my eyes with his little, black devil eyes. I thought, ‘something is not right,’” Melendez-Perez said. “But I did not know what it was, because his passport is good, his visa was good.”
The man was a Saudi national who had not properly filled out his customs paperwork and claimed to not speak English, so, per protocol, he was sent to secondary screening for an interview with Melendez-Perez.
“This guy was staring at me giving me this dirty look, and I say, ‘something is not right with this individual,” Melendez-Perez said. “The first question I asked was, ‘Why don’t you have a return ticket?’
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https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2021/09/10/orlando-airport-inspector-credited-with-denying-entry-to-the-20th-hijacker-of-911-terrorist-attacks/