Mohamed Atta, 33, Egypt Atta was quickly identified as the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks. [112], There are multiple, conflicting explanations for Atta's behavior and motivation. He rented a Chevrolet Malibu from an Alamo Rent A Car agency. 9/11 victim calmly describes hijack on haunting tape [110] In an interview on September 24, 2001, Atta Sr. stated, "My son is gone. Former Maine airline ticket agent recalls encounter with 9/11 - WMTW 122 in Coral Springs, Florida, for $840 per month,[68] and assisted with the arrival of the muscle hijackers. - 9:03 a.m. An airport incident report indicates that the Piper Cherokee stalled at 5:45 p.m. and was removed from the taxiway by 6:20 p.m. PDF Killing in The Name of God: Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda . Atta and the other Hamburg cell members were recruited by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for a "planes operation" in the United States. "This begs the question of why the pilots had not punched in the hijack code of 7500, also known as Squawking, if things were happening on the plane before the hijackers gained entry to the . Readers may recall the shaving custom from the media coverage of 9/11. As the five-year anniversary of 9/11 approaches, major questions about the terrorist attacks remain unanswered. The Web . After Jarrah's team hijacked Flight 93, flight attendants and passengers started making phone calls from the back of the plane. On the way, they were seen getting gasoline at an Exxon gas station and visited the Longfellow House in Portland that afternoon;[82] they arrived at the hotel at 5:43p.m. and spent the night in Room 233. ''A guy said, 'Hey, some of your pilots are down here and they left the plane on the causeway,' '' Mr. Kraus recalled. Atta's professor, Dittmar Machule, brought him along on an archaeological expedition to Aleppo in 1994. They were all well-educated, had experience of living in western society, along with some English skills, and would be able to obtain visas. Atta flew Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. "[111], In 2021, on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, Atta's mother was interviewed by a Spanish newspaper. They drove a rented Nissan to Portland, Maine, and arrived at the Comfort Inn Hotel at 5:43 p.m. At the time, Tyler Drumhiller was a top official at the CIA, responsible for all European Operations. It is not known where he stayed that night, but on the 29th he registered at the Econo Lodge at 1150 South Las Vegas Boulevard. He . The third hijacked plane, American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 that took off from Dulles Airport . [3] Immediately after returning to Germany, Atta, al-Shehhi, and Jarrah reported their passports stolen, possibly to discard travel visas to Afghanistan. By the end of July, both Atta and Shehhi did solo flights. A spokesman for the F.A.A. [30] Atta had harbored a desire to return to his native city, ever since he finished his studies in Hamburg; but he was prevented by the dearth of job prospects in Cairo, his family lacking the "right connections" to avail the customary nepotism. And that may have been what he was doing. Records on Atta's cellphone indicated that he phoned the Moroccan embassy in Washington on January 2, just before Shehhi flew to the country. Kersten said in an interview at the agency's headquarters in Wiesbaden that Atta was in Afghanistan from late 1999 until early 2000,[53][54] and that there was evidence that Atta met with Osama bin Laden there. A ticket staffer at Portland Airport reported becoming uneasy with the anger of Atta upon being told of the additional screening requirements in Boston, but that he did not act on his suspicions after becoming concerned that he was racially profiling Atta. He mentioned Al Qaeda and said the organization "could use memberships from Americans". ''I told them to forget it. On American Airlines Flight 11, Atta joined four other hijackers. One of Atta's bags did not make it onto Flight 11, leaving . [42] He made acquaintances at al-Quds; some of whom visited him on occasion at Centrumshaus. [73][74] After bin al-Shibh returned to Germany on July 16, 2001, Atta had three more days in Spain. So why did UA Flight 93 prove to be the only plane that failed to reach its intended target, retaken by its passengers and forced to crash? Ramzi bin al-Shibh is also identified in the video. While in the United States he traveled to Lawrenceville, Georgia, where he and Shehhi visited an LA Fitness Health Club. Mohamed Atta had varied his name on documents, also using "Mehan Atta", "Mohammad El Amir", "Muhammad Atta", "Mohamed El Sayed", "Mohamed Elsayed", "Muhammad al-Amir", "Awag Al Sayyid Atta", and "Awad Al Sayad". His nascent infatuation with her, begrudgingly realised, was the closest thing Atta knew to romance. [34] His friends in Germany described him as an intelligent man in whom religious convictions and political motives held equal sway. Mahmoud Atta was 14 years older than Atta. Each day a new story will be published here. We will examine that 9/11 mystery in our next report. Atta flew Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Atta also claimed different nationalities, sometimes Egyptian and other times telling people he was from the United Arab Emirates. A NATION CHALLENGED: THE SUSPECTS; Mohamed Atta in Close Call In The plane is piloted by plot leader Mohamed Atta. Waleed purchased his ticket online with his debit card. He stayed there until 1998. [97] After 9/11, there also were reports stating that Mohamed Atta had attended International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Nepal plane crash victim shared tragic online post moments before 68 passengers died. Shower. That month, Atta and Shehhi stayed in hotels and rented rooms in New York City on a short-term basis. [73][74] He drove east out of Madrid towards the Mediterranean beach area of Tarragona. The 30million CSI-style probe has taken seven years. [100][101][102], In 2005, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Congressman Curt Weldon alleged that the Defense Department data mining project, Able Danger, produced a chart that identified Atta, along with Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Marwan al-Shehhi, as members of a Brooklyn-based al-Qaeda cell in early 2000. At 8:26 a.m., Flight 11 makes . At the Hamburg University of Technology, Atta studied under the guidance of the department chair, Dittmar Machule, who specialized in the Middle East. His father, who kept the family ever insulated, forbade young Atta to fraternize with the other children in their neighborhood. He would soon post a note forbidding pilots from flying into Miami International. They also discussed the personal difficulties Atta was having with fellow hijacker Ziad Jarrah. "It is possible that he calculated that security would be less stringent in Portland, Maine, than it would be in Boston, said terrorism expert Steve Emerson. He lived in Hamburg in the 1990's and is now believed to have trained at an Al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan in 1999. Likewise, Shehhi traveled from a different location, in his case via Brussels. [64] Law-enforcement officials said Bryant passed a lie-detector exam. [27][28], While in Hamburg, Atta held several positions, such as one part-time job at Plankontor, as well as another at an urban planning firm, beginning in 1992. [8] In his will, written in 1996, Atta gives his name as "Mohamed the son of Mohamed Elamir awad Elsayed". This encounter took place "around the third week of April to the third week of May of 2000", before Atta's official entry date into the United States (see below). With its passengers defiant, the plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Mohammed Atta Released by Israel | Snopes.com He believed that the drab and impersonal apartment blocks, built in the 60s and 70s, ruined the beauty of old neighborhoods and robbed their people of privacy and dignity. He harbored anger and resentment toward the U.S. for its policy in Islamic nations of the Middle East, with nothing inflaming his ire more than the Oslo Accords and the Gulf War in particular. Had Atta or any of these men been on international watchlists, their names would have been flagged upon making a domestic reservation. The hijacked airliner came down . In August 2001, Atta traveled as a passenger on several "surveillance" flights, to establish in detail how the attacks could be carried out. The next day, he received a five-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa from the United States embassy in Berlin. This photo taken 12 September 2001 shows the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, PA. Why was Ziad Jarrah's plane the only one that failed to hit its target? He had made no progress on his thesis. Mohamed Atta - Wikipedia Atta flew to Spain on January 4, 2001, to coordinate with bin al-Shibh and returned to the United States on January 10. "[105][106], Five witnesses who had worked on Able Danger and had been questioned by the Defense Department's Inspector General later told investigative journalists that their statements to the IG were distorted by investigators in the final IG's report, or the report omitted essential information that they had provided. A Pakistani businessman named Mohammed Atta had come to Prague from Saudi Arabia on May 31, 2000, with this second Atta possibly contributing to the confusion. That aircraft hit the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. United Flight 175, also from Boston, hit the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. "One of the things we did at the White House was push the FBI to focus on Portland to determine whether or not there were people there that they might have met with, Cressey said. But, he agreed, it raised a host of questions, most notably one that remains unanswered: Why were the two novice pilots flying into a heavily trafficked airport on such a busy day? On November 29, 1999, Mohamed Atta boarded Turkish Airlines Flight TK1662 from Hamburg to Istanbul, where he changed to flight TK1056 to Karachi, Pakistan. Flight 93 was aiming for the Capitol on 9/11 - Washington Post His mother, Bouthayna Mohamed Mustapha Sheraqi, came from a wealthy farming and trading family and was also educated. They were among the first to enter the U.S. in May and . But more likely it is that the origination of his flight in Newark, delayed on the ground for 40 minutes, that made his flight more vulnerable. Mr. Pursell later posted a sign inside the flight school forbidding novice pilots from flying into Miami International. Flight controllers, according to airport records, guided the waiting passenger airliners around the stalled aircraft until it was towed away 35 minutes later. Original Plan for 9/11 Attacks Involved 10 Planes, Panel Says Mohammed Atta | Egyptian militant | Britannica [91] The angle at which Atta crashed into the North Tower severed all means of escape from Floor 92 or higher, ensuring that no one on those floors was able to make it out alive before the building collapsed 102 minutes later at 10:28 A.M.[92], Because the flight from Portland to Boston had been delayed,[93] his bags did not make it onto Flight 11. IE 11 is not supported. He seldom bathed, and they could not bear his "complete, almost aggressive insularity". Bouthayna and Mohamed married when she was 14, via an arranged marriage. [11] Atta was the only son; he had two older sisters who are both well-educated and successful in their careers one as a medical doctor and the other as a professor. "Might have just been doing surveillance detection just to see if somebody might have been following him up in that area, Drumhiller said. He was among the highest-scoring students; by his senior year, he was admitted to an exclusive architecture program. On May 2, Atta received his driver's license in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida. [83][84][85], Atta and al-Omari arrived early the next morning, at 5:40a.m., at the Portland International Jetport, where they left their rental car in the parking lot and boarded at 6:00a.m. Colgan Air (US Airways Express) BE-1900C flight to Logan International Airport in Boston. . He provided the first official confirmation that Atta and two other pilots had been in Afghanistan, and he also provided the first dates of the training. He was the hijacker-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11 which he crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center as part of the coordinated attacks. ", "Staff Report "We Have Some Planes": The Four Flights a Chronology", National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, "The Aviation Security System and the 9/11 Attacks Staff Statement No. He also said he assumed that they had taxied the plane back to the hangar; he was not aware, he said, that they apparently abandoned the plane and walked away. Some, like the 9/11 plot's ringleader, Mohamed Atta, flew in from Florida, checking into a motel in Wayne for a few days and then leaving and then returning days . Instead, he went to Central Office & Travel in Pompano Beach to purchase a ticket for a flight to Newark, leaving on the evening of August 7 and schedule to return in the evening on August 9. After he graduated in 1990 with an architecture degree,[15] he joined the Engineers Syndicate, an organization under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. In this series, Newsweek maps the road to 9/11 as it happened 20 years ago, day by day. But Atta's night before 9-11 - which he spent in Portland, Main -- is a mystery that has puzzled terrorism experts for five years. There was some confusion regarding who Mohamed Atta was, and cases of mistaken identity. In April, he was ticketed in South Florida for driving without a license. Almost all of these points discuss spiritual preparation, such as prayer and citing religious scripture. The incident joins the short but tantalizing list of near-miss encounters involving Mr. Atta. ''Tower seemed to have no trouble taxiing around it at a busy time,'' the handwritten report reads. ET (approx.) Officials at Signature did not respond to several telephone requests to find out whether anyone at the company remembered Mr. Atta or Mr. Shehhi. [33], After coming to Hamburg in 1992, Atta grew more religiously fanatical and frequented the mosque with greater regularity. - United Airlines Flight 175 (traveling from Boston to Los Angeles) strikes the South Tower of the World Trade Center . Just stay quiet and you will be OK. We are returning to the airport." Maine's connection to 9/11 endures - spectrumlocalnews.com Political psychologist Jerrold Post has suggested that Atta and his fellow hijackers were just following orders from al-Qaeda leadership, "and whatever their destructive, charismatic leader Osama bin Laden said was the right thing to do for the sake of the cause was what they would do. Anyone can read what you share. "[1][95], In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the names of the hijackers were released. The next winter, they moved into an apartment at Marienstrasse 54 in the borough of Harburg, near the Hamburg University of Technology,[50] at which they enrolled. Just stay quiet." Air Traffic Controllers 'Did the Impossible' on 9/11 - ABC News [30], In Hamburg, Atta was intensely drawn to al-Quds Mosque which adhered to a "harsh, uncompromisingly fundamentalist, and resoundingly militant" version of Sunni Islam. A voice believed to be that of al Qaeda hijack leader Mohamed Atta urged passengers to . THE LAST NIGHT. Practicing for his assignment, Ziad Jarrah took a check ride at Airborne Systems Flight School in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, on August 17. They instead traveled to Afghanistan over a two-week period in late November. Timeline September 11, 2001. [25] The invitation had been for a three-day visit, but Atta ended up staying several weeks that August, only to visit Aleppo yet again that December. Days later, Shehhi, Jarrah and Atta ended up in Venice, Florida. 5:45 AM - Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al-Omari, two of the intended hijackers, pass through security at the Portland International Jetport in Maine. Who was responsible for 9/11? Identity of the September 11 hijackers [38] These beliefs were even stronger during Operation Infinite Reach, which he believed that Monica Lewinsky was a Jewish agent influencing Bill Clinton against aiding Palestine, which would later play a key role in creating the Hamburg Cell. Throughout the summer, Atta met with Nawaf al-Hazmi to discuss the status of the operation on a monthly basis. The date for the planes operation is set. Bin Laden asked them to pledge loyalty and commit to suicide missions, which Atta and the other three Hamburg men all accepted. [37] Atta was anti-Semitic, believing that Jews controlled the world's media, financial, and political institutions from New York City. Hijackers in the September 11 attacks - Wikipedia Shave excess hair from the body and wear cologne. On April 16, Atta was given a citation for not having a valid driver's license, and he began steps to get the license. ''Whatever came of that, I don't know,'' said Dan Pursell, who was then the chief instructor at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Fla., the flight school where Mr. Atta and Mr. Shehhi earned their pilot's licenses and had rented the Piper Cherokee that day. During the meeting, Atta and bin al-Shibh also decided on the targets to be hit, ruling out a strike on a nuclear plant. ; Azrbaycanca; Catal; etina; Dansk; Deutsch; Espaol; ; Franais; ; Hausa; Bahasa Indonesia; Italiano; . Since these were domestic flights, there was no particular means at the time for the intelligence community to receive a tip-off of a reservation. [7] In Germany, he registered his name as "Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta", and went by the name Mohamed el-Amir at the Hamburg University of Technology. [55], A video surfaced in October 2006. Timeline of events on 9/11 - KXXV But with more than 200,000 warrants pending on minor offenses in Broward County, he was never picked up. September 11 Hijackers Fast Facts | CNN As his father insisted that he go abroad for graduate studies, Atta, to this end, entered a German-language program at the Goethe Institute in Cairo. [80] [81], On September 10, 2001, Atta picked up al-Omari from the Milner Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, and the two drove their rented Nissan Altima to a Comfort Inn in South Portland, Maine. The investigator, Klaus Ulrich Kersten was the director of Germany's federal anticrime agency, the Bundeskriminalamt. [99] Intelligence officials have concluded that such a meeting did not occur. Wail's ticket was purchased over the phone with a debit card. Al Qaeda and the Taliban - Sky News Mohamed Atta", "In Egypt, some see war on terror as a war on Islam", "Interview with Professor Dittmar Machule", "Four Corners Ralph Bodenstein interview", "Will Gives a Window into Suspect's Mind", "Germans Lay Out Early Qaeda Ties to 9/11 Hijackers", "Video showing Atta, bin Laden is unearthed", "Zacarias Moussauoi v. the United States (trial testimony)", "Transcript of Johnelle Bryant Interview", "Hijacker tried to get U.S. loan to buy plane", "Algerian accused in Britain of training hijackers", "Atta recibi en Tarragona joyas para que los miembros del 'comando' del 11-S se hiciesen pasar por ricos saudes", "War Without Borders The Madrid Bombing", "Search for Sept. 11 Suspect Focuses on a Visit to Spain", "Sept. 11 hijacker raised suspicions at border", Document links al Qaeda paymaster, 9/11 plotter, "NewsMine.org hijackers traced to huffman aviation.txt", "While America Slept: The True Story of 9/11", "A Mundane Itinerary on the Eve of Terror", "9/11 mystery: What was Atta doing on 9/10? There hasn't been a successful attack against commercial aviation in the U.S. in the 20 years since 9/11, and outside experts agree that while there is still room for improvement, the TSA has been .
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