The FBI has given the city medical examiner’s office DNA profiles from the 10 hijackers who crashed planes into the Twin Towers so the terrorists’ remains can be separated from those of their victims, officials said yesterday.
“We have profiles and we have to see what we can match,” said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner.
“If they were to match any remains we have, those remains would be removed.”
City Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch asked the FBI last summer for the DNA samples at the request of relatives of 9/11 victims.
The family members hope to establish a tomb of the unknown to house unidentified remains as part of a Ground Zero memorial and they are concerned that body parts from the killers would be mixed in.
“This is definitely a positive move for us because we don’t want them intermingled,” said John Cartier, whose brother James died on 9/11.
“I want them removed and I really don’t care what they do with them. They can use them for dirt in the street.”
FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said bureau experts believe they have created DNA profiles for all 10 hijackers on the two planes that flew into the Twin Towers, including the leader, Mohamed Atta.
“We recovered items from the rental car, from residences … which are believed to be from the hijackers,” Bresson said.
“We would take the evidence we obtained, test … to find out if there was DNA we could glean from that, and we developed profiles.”
Bresson said samples were taken from items like car steering wheels or hairbrushes handled by the hijackers.