was deeply religious and attended Al-Seqley Mosque, which his family had built as the local mosque. Al-Shehri also frequented government-supported religious camps in Saudi Arabia. At this time, there were strong religious feelings in Saudi Arabia, especially in the Asir region. Many young people in the region idolized Osama bin Laden, who had family ties to the area. Al-Shehri's father was a friend of Bin Laden's father, Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden. Ahmed al-Nami and Saeed al-Ghamdi, who were both hijackers on United Airlines Flight 93, came from the same area in Saudi Arabia as the Shehri family. After graduating from Abha teachers college in 1999, Wail al-Shehri took a job as an elementary school physical education teacher at the Khamis Mushait airbase. Five months into the job, al-Shehri took leave due to mental illness and depression. Rather than conventional therapy, al-Shehri sought consultation with Muslim clerics, and hoped that a visit to Medina would help. His treatment involved verses from the Qur'an read to him by a sheikh. He traveled to Medina together with Waleed. After the September 11 attacks, others recalled seeing the al-Shehri brothers in Medina. Afghanistan Wail and Waleed al-Shehri disappeared after going to Medina, calling their father just once; in the conversation, the brothers were vague about when they would return. Both had expressed interest in joining the jihad in Chechnya, though may have been diverted to Afghanistan. Before disappearing, the al-Shehri brothers went to Al-Seqley Mosque to swear an oath and commitment to jihad, as did Ahmed al-Nami and Saeed al-Ghamdi. Wail al-Shehri presided over the ceremony, dubbing himself Abu Mossaeb al-Janubi after one of Muhammad's companions. In March 2000, he left for Pakistan with Waleed and Ahmed al-Nami; later, they went on to Afghanistan. Wail al-Shehri followed the standard path for new al-Qaeda recruits in Afghanistan, spending time in the Khalden training camp and then Al Farouq training camp near Kandahar. Details on how the non-pilot ("muscle") hijackers were chosen for the September 11 attacks are vague, though the hijackers appear to have been selected by senior al-Qaeda leaders in 2000 from the thousands of recruits at training camps in Afghanistan. The most capable and motivated volunteers were at al-Farouq, and Saudi citizens were good candidates, since it would be easy for them to obtain visas to travel to the United States. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director George Tenet later said that the