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Mohammed Atta
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Mohammed Atta

Mohammed Atta al Sayed (September 1, 1968 - September 11, 2001), was identified by the U.S. Justice Department as the suicide pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center in the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks. He is now believed to have been the leader of the attacks. He has used several aliases and alternate spellings, including Mehan Atta, Mohamed Atta, Mohammad El Amir, Mohamed El Sayed, Muhammad Muhammad Al Amir Awag Al Sayyid Atta, and Muhammad Muhammad Al-Amir Awad Al Sayad.

(More is known about Mohammed Atta than any of the other 9/11 hijackers. However there are reports that seem to contradict others, indicating that he was in two places at the same time. Some reports may be unreliable, and it is possible that more than one person used Atta's identity at various times.)

Early history

Atta was born September 1, 1968 in Kafr El Sheikh, a city in the Nile Delta in Egypt and also carried a Saudi passport. He grew up in Cairo, Egypt and graduated with a degree in architecture from Cairo University. He apparently was not particulary religious at this time. He then moved to Germany, where he was registered as a student of urban planning at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg in Hamburg from 1993 to 1999. (There are other reports that Atta attended Valencia School of Medicine in Spain during this period. This may be a case of mistaken identity.[1])

In Germany, Atta was registered as a citizen of the United Arab Emirates. His German friends describe him as an intelligent man with religious beliefs who grew angry over the Western policy toward the Middle East, including the Oslo Process and the Gulf War. MSNBC in its special "The Making of the Death Pilots" interviewed German friend Ralph Bodenstein who traveled, worked and talked a lot with Mohammed Atta. Ralph said, "He (Atta) was most imbued actually about Israeli politics in the region and about US protection of these Israeli politics in the region. And he was to a degree personally suffering from that."

While in Germany, Mohammed Atta became more and more religious, especially after a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1995. A German terrorist of Syrian origin, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, claims he met Atta at this time and recruited him into al-Qaida.[1] (Zammar had al-Qaeda contacts going back a decade, and knew Osama bin Laden personally.) Atta started attending an Islamic prayer group at the university, and is thought to have recruited for fundamentalist causes there. Other students remember him making strident anti-American and anti-Semitic statements. In a visit home to Egypt in 1998, his former friends noticed that he had become much more of a religious fundamentalist than he had been before.

Al-Qaida involvement

On November 1, 1998, Atta moved into an apartment in Germany with terrorists Said Bahaji and Ramzi Binalshibh. The Hamburg cell was born at this apartment.class="external">[1 They met three or four times a week to discuss their anti-American feelings and plot possible attacks. Many al-Qaida members lived in this apartment at various times, including hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi, Zakariya Essabar, hijacker Waleed al-Shehri, and others. In all, 29 men listed the apartment as their home address while Atta's name was the lease. The 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed visited the apartment repeatedly.

In late 1999, Atta, al-Shehhi, Jarrah, Bahaji, and Binalshibh decided to travel to Chechnya to fight against the Russians, but were convinced by Khalid al-Masri and Mohamedou Ould Slahi at the last minute to change their plans. They instead traveled to Afghanistan to meet with Osama bin Laden and train for terrorist attacks. In addition, Atta was trained in passport alteration. Immediately afterwards, Atta, al-Shehhi, and Jerrah reported their passports stolen, possibly to erase travel visas to Afghanistan.

Atta is then reported to have been living in the Philippines, but is also reported to be living back in Germany. He may have travelled often between locations, or there may be some confusion between two different people. Some have speculated that another person was using Atta's passport in the Philippines at this time.[1]

Atta and the other hijackers began to work at appearing normal, shaving their beards and avoiding known radicals. Starting in 2000, the CIA put Atta under surveilance in Germany. He was trailed by CIA agents, and was observed buying large quantities of chemicals.[2]class="external">[1 When Atta entered the United States in June, the CIA says its surveilance of Atta ended. It is unclear whether the FBI monitered Atta's activities in the U.S.

In the United States

In March, while still in Germany, Atta contacted 31 different U.S. flight schools to discuss training to fly planes. Upon entering the U.S. on June 3, 2000, Atta and other hijackers opened at least 35 bank accounts with fake social security numbers, but none of the accounts were checked by the banks. In July, Atta enrolled at Huffman Aviation International in Venice, Florida. He was always accompanied by Marwan al-Shehhi, a hijacker of United Airlines flight 175; Atta claimed to be of royal Saudi descent and presented al-Shehhi as his bodyguard. Both earned their instrument certificates from the FAA in November, and received their licenses the next month.

In December of 2000, Atta went to the Miami area to practice on a Boeing 727 simulator. He returned to Germany to coordinate with Binalshib, returning on January 10, 2001. He traveled to Georgia for unknown reasons, and then moved into an apartment in Coral Springs, Florida. He assisted with the arrival of the "muscle" hijackers in April. In May, he began to take "surveillance flights", rehearsing how the 9/11 attacks would be carried out.

Atta left again in May 2001 for Spain to meet with Binalshibh for the last time. They coordinated the details of the attacks, but did not reach a firm agreement on all the targets or the date. They did decide that the World Trade Center would be hit, and they ruled out a strike on a nuclear plant. They also discussed the personal difficulties Atta was having with fellow-hijacker Ziad Jarrah. Binalshibh was worried that Jarrah might even abandon the plan. The 9/11 Commission Report speculates that Zacarias Moussaoui was being trained as a possible replacement for Jarrah.

US investigators claim that Atta sent a package to Mustafa Ahmed in the United Arab Emirates on September 4. Mustafa Ahmed is central to the funding of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terror organization.

Atta, along with at least five other future hijackers, traveled to Las Vegas at least six times in the Summer of 2001. They reportedly drank alcohol, gambled, and paid strippers to perform lap dances for them.[1] In the week before the attack, Atta was seen drinking and playing video games in a Florida sports bar. He also apparently visited each of the hijacking teams to ensure that everything was in place for the hijackings.

The attacks

Atta spent the day before the attack with another hijacker, Abdulaziz al-Omari, in South Portland and Scarborough, Maine. In the morning of September 11, they drove to the Portland International Jetport (PWM), flew on Colgan Air (US Airways Express) to Logan International Airport in Boston and boarded American Airlines Flight 11. At 6:45 am, while at the Boston airport, Mohammed Atta took a call from Marwan al-Shehhi, another hijacker. This call was apparently to confirm the attacks were ready to begin.

At 7:59, the plane departed from Boston, carrying 81 passengers. At 8:24, a voice believed to be Atta's said, "Nobody move. Everything will be OK. If you try to make any moves, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet." Atta is believed to have been the pilot of the plane when it crashed into the World Trade Center.

Because the flight from Portland to Boston had been delayed, his bags did not make it onto Flight 11. When later found by US authorities, they contained airline uniforms, flight manuals and a four-page document in Arabic, copies of which were also found with the terrorists of the other three planes. It contains a list of instructions, such as "make an oath to die and renew your intentions", "you should feel complete tranquillity, because the time between you and your marriage in heaven is very short", "check your weapon before you leave and long before you leave. You must make your knife sharp and you must not discomfort your animal during the slaughter". The writer of this document is now believed to have been Abdulaziz al-Omari.

Mistaken identity

Initially, Mohammed Atta's identity was confused with that of a native Jordanian, Mahmoud Mahmoud Atta, who bombed a bus in 1986 on the Israel-controlled West Bank, killing one and severely injuring three. Mahmoud Mahmoud Atta, a naturalized US citizen, was subsequently deported from Venezuela to the United States, extradited to Israel, tried and sentenced to life in prison. The Israeli supreme court later invalidated his extradition and set him free; his whereabouts are unknown. He is 14 years older than Mohammed Atta. After the September 11 attacks, a general furor arose over the supposed failure of immigration authorities and the US intelligence community to stop a known terrorist from entering the country under his true name. Eventually, the Boston Globe factually reported details from records at the US Circuit Court of Appeals detailing the detention and subsequent extradition of Mahmoud Mahmoud Atta from the US.

It is believed that Atta was a ringleader among the hijackers. In a video released by the US government, Osama bin Laden points to Atta as the leader of the attacks (see videos of bin Laden). Atta's father, a retired lawyer in Egypt, characterized this accusation in an interview as ridiculous, calling his son gentle and shy.

External links and references