Last words of a terrorist | World news | The Guardian "[111], In 2021, on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, Atta's mother was interviewed by a Spanish newspaper. Mr. Kraus and Mr. Pursell said that the breakdown could have happened to any pilot on any airfield, but that the response by the two men was wrong. We went through the logs of ferries leaving Maine, and we went through the logs of airlines and anything associated with potential for a terrorist cell to support Atta. The Mohamed Atta Files - NBC News [40] Before this trip he grew out a beard, with a view to show himself as a devout Muslim and to make a political gesture thereby. A well-connected Saudi family hosted visits from 9/11 terrorists at their Sarasota, Fla., home, including Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, who were the hijackers in the cockpit of the plane which . One theory suggests that Mohamed Atta and the other pilots who led the hijacking teams were here planning the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. A secret police intelligence report . In the summer of 2001, Mohamed Atta, the operational leader of the 9/11 conspiracy, drove another conspirator, Ziah Jarrah, to Miami's main airport so that Mr. Jarrah could fly to Germany to visit . In this series, Newsweek maps the road to 9/11 as it happened 20 years ago, day by day. An employee at Huffman confirmed that the flight school did send the agency the plane's maintenance records. Mohamed Atta is believed to have been the pilot of the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. . Even for those who couldn't believe what they were seeing, that signaled a terrorist plot, with the possibility of more attacks to follow. The crash and fire kill 59 on the plane and 125 on the . TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. [16] When Atta and Shehhi arrived in Florida, they initially stayed with Huffman's bookkeeper and his wife in a spare room of their house. before the crash, the . The men who planned and carried out the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings staked out the White House before deciding that their targets should be the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and the U.S . He mentioned Osama bin Laden and said "this man would someday be known as the world's greatest leader." [69], On June 27, Atta flew from Fort Lauderdale to Boston, Massachusetts, where he spent a day, and then continued to San Francisco for a short time, and from there to Las Vegas. 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. He spoke again seconds after that first transmission, still unaware that his voice was being heard on the ground: "Nobody move, everything will be OK. Both enrolled at Jones Aviation in Sarasota and took training there for a brief time. Ramzi bin al-Shibh was also there, teaching occasional classes, and became Atta's friend. Now, we are living in Germany since a while for study purposes. Timeline of events on 9/11 - KXXV Who was responsible for 9/11? Identity of the September 11 hijackers Published Nov 7, 2001. Mohammed Atta, 33, and Marwan al-Shehhi, 23, piloted the planes that hit the World Trade Center, the North and South Towers, respectively. There, Mr. Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, another man the F.B.I. [6] At 8:18am, flight attendants Betty Ong and Madeline Amy Sweeney began making phone calls to American Airlines to report what was happening. [26] While in Syria, he met Amal, a young Palestinian woman who worked for a planning bureau in the city. THE LAST NIGHT. Given the vagaries of traveling on the East Coast, (it was a) tremendous risk to take. It had been overlooked that there would still be a security screen to pass in Boston because of this distinct detail of the terminal's arrangement. [109] The elder Mr. Atta said he had spoken with Mohamed by phone the day after on September 12, 2001. Personal Stories - Instructions For The Last Night - PBS Atta grew up in Egypt and studied urban planning in Germany. On August 6, Atta and Shehhi rented a white, four-door 1995 Ford Escort from Warrick's Rent-A-Car, which was returned on August 13. 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. 'Stay quiet and you'll be OK,' Atta told passengers - CNN He had vacationed often as a child (and would continue to take vacations with his wife while he was in the United States) and was the best English speaker and student of the four. This document is divided into three sections; the first is a fifteen point list providing detailed instructions for the last night of a martyr's life, the second gives instructions for travelling to the plane and the third from the time between boarding the plane and martyrdom. I have been planning and working with Bin Laden on the destruction of certain American targets. [110] In an interview on September 24, 2001, Atta Sr. stated, "My son is gone. Atta disappeared from Germany for periods of time, embarking on the hajj in 1995 but also meeting Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan from late-1999 to early-2000. So, did Mohammed Atta go to Portland because of security issues? Lip readers have failed to decipher it. With its passengers defiant, the plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. He insisted that she write his name as ATTA, that he originally was from Egypt but had moved to Afghanistan, that he was an engineer and that his dream was to go to a flight school. 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? [16], On August 4, Atta is believed to have been at Orlando International Airport waiting to pick up suspected "20th Hijacker" Mohammed al-Qahtani from Dubai, who ended up being held by immigration as "suspicious." . [34] His friends in Germany described him as an intelligent man in whom religious convictions and political motives held equal sway. A huge search operation is underway to try and find any survivors from the horror plane crash in Nepal, but officials have said that the chances of finding any . The leader of the nineteen was Mohamed Atta, and they were divided into four groups, one for each plane, each with a pilot who served as group leader: Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Samir Jarrah . He assumed that they had already radioed the tower so he advised them to go to the offices of Signature, the private general aviation operator at the airport. According to the interrogations of KSM and Ramzi Bin al-Shibh (his interlocutor in Germany), Mohammed Atta was worried about the communications, Atta's real concern being that Jarrah might be unable to break away from his wife, that it would just be too painful in the end for him to follow through with his suicide flight. Shave excess hair from the body and wear cologne. American Airlines Flight 11: Mohamed Atta, Egypt (33) - Tactical leader of 9/11 plot and pilot. [6] Atta was not heard from again for nine minutes until 8:33:59, when he was heard to say: "Nobody move, please. 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. Atta and Jarrah appear in high spirits, laughing and smiling in front of the camera. The Israeli Supreme Court later overturned his extradition and set him free. The two al-Shehri brothers selected seats 2A and 2B in first class. Skies, Plot Leader Met bin Laden", "Video of 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta posted by British news site", "FBI Informant Says Agents Missed Chance to Stop 9/11 Ringleader Mohammed Atta", "Flight Path Study American Airlines Flight 11", "Personal Stories Who Were They? Passengers Defeated the Well-trained Hijacker Assigned to - Newsweek Mr. Kraus noted that the two men had been trained on smaller, ''uncontrolled'' airports that operate without flight towers. Atta stayed in Cairo awhile with his family after Hauth and Bodenstein flew back to Germany. In Germany, he enrolled in the urban planning graduate program at the Hamburg University of Technology. After consulting with the other hijacker pilots about the flights they also booked on September 11, three days later Atta again visited aa.com and retrieved his reservations and paid for his flight for himself and A. al-Omari (one of his muscle men) using his VISA card. Atta was seated in business class, in seat 8D. 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. [112], There are multiple, conflicting explanations for Atta's behavior and motivation. 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. [24] Atta was averse to modern development. Atta's professor, Dittmar Machule, brought him along on an archaeological expedition to Aleppo in 1994. Mahmoud Atta was 14 years older than Atta. "Might have just been doing surveillance detection just to see if somebody might have been following him up in that area, Drumhiller said. Mr. Kraus said Mr. Atta and Mr. Shehhi told him they had not been aware that they needed to radio the tower for instructions. [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. The 9/11 Commission obtained details about the meeting, based on interrogations of bin al-Shibh in the weeks after his arrest in September 2002. Why do terrorists shave their bodies? - Slate Magazine We are going back to the airport. They had problems following instructions and were both very upset when they failed their Stage 1 exam at Jones Aviation. Many al-Qaeda members lived in this apartment at various times, including hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi, Zakariya Essabar, and others. 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. Atta purchased cockpit videos for Boeing 747-200, Boeing 757-200, Airbus A320 and Boeing 767-300ER models via mail-order from Sporty's Pilot Shop in Batavia, Ohio, in November and December 2000.[16]. The official, Mr. Kraus said, said the two pilots had abandoned the plane without radioing the tower and were walking across the airfield toward the main hanger used for general aviation. After he graduated in 1990 with an architecture degree,[15] he joined the Engineers Syndicate, an organization under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood. He held interviews with the German news magazine Bild am Sonntag in late 2002, saying his son was alive and hiding in fear for his life, and that American Christians were responsible for the attacks. "He wanted to finance a twin-engine, six-passenger aircraft and remove the seats," Bryant told ABC's World News Tonight. He rented a Chevrolet Malibu from an Alamo Rent A Car agency. Atta took control of the plane and crashed it into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46a.m.[6] The crash led to the collapse of the skyscraper and the deaths of more than 1,600 people. If any of the hijackers could not reach their intended targets, Atta said, they were to crash the plane. He used his credit card to purchase two Swiss Army knives and some chocolate in a shop at the Zrich Airport. Atta flew to Spain on January 4, 2001, to coordinate with bin al-Shibh and returned to the United States on January 10. (L to R, top to bottom) Ahmed Alnami, Ahmed Ibrahim A. al-Haznawi, Ziad Samir al-Jarrah, and Saeed Alghamdi. [60][61], On June 6, 2002, ABC's World News Tonight broadcast an interview with Johnelle Bryant, former loan officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in south Florida, who told about her encounter with Mohamed Atta. 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. Sources and Detailed Information - National Park Service The night before, Atta went to Portland, Maine, a trip that has mystified terrorism experts for five years. [8][29] Among other odd jobs to supplement his income, Atta sometimes worked at a cleaning company and sometimes bought and sold cars. Atta phoned his graduate advisor, Machule, and mentioned family problems at home, saying, "Please understand, I don't want to talk about this. The hijacked airliner came down . In the end though, those international calls and Emails open a window to the falsehood of greater authority to intercept communications. A NATION CHALLENGED: THE SUSPECTS; Mohamed Atta in Close Call In Incident at Miami Airport, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/17/us/nation-challenged-suspects-mohamed-atta-close-call-incident-miami-airport.html. [76], During the meetings in Spain, Atta and bin al-Shibh had coordinated the details of the attacks. Dale Kraus, then the general manager at Huffman, recalled a telephone call that came within minutes of the incident in Miami from an irritated official in the flight tower. The incident, which occurred on a busy travel day at the country's ninth-busiest passenger airport, is especially notable because of how close it brought the two men to official scrutiny. Here's some background information about the 19 hijackers of September 11, 2001.. Timeline September 11, 2001 - Nineteen men hijack four commercial airlines loaded with fuel for cross country . [73][74] He drove east out of Madrid towards the Mediterranean beach area of Tarragona. In Hijacker's Bags, a Call to Planning, Prayer and Death On September 11 we'll live tweet the events of the day, minute by minute, starting at 4:45 a.m. EST, @RoadTo911. Of the four hijacker pilots, Jarrah was the most westernized, coming from a Lebanese secular background and Christian schooling before moving to Germany for university studies. A voice believed to be that of al Qaeda hijack leader Mohamed Atta urged passengers to . The video, bearing the date of January 18, 2000, is of good resolution but contains no sound track. He had made no progress on his thesis. On the morning of September 11, Atta boarded American Airlines Flight 11, which he and his team then hijacked. [88] At 6:45a.m., while at the Boston airport, Atta took a call from Flight 175 hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi. Hanjour piloted the plane. During the meeting, Atta and bin al-Shibh also decided on the targets to be hit, ruling out a strike on a nuclear plant. The incident joins the short but tantalizing list of near-miss encounters involving Mr. Atta. And they then took action, eventually making their way into the cockpit, forcing the plane down. Air traffic controller Danielle O'Brien was at the Dulles Tower outside Washington, D.C., that morning. [32] Atta Sr. rejected media reports that stated his son was drinking wildly, and instead described his son as a quiet boy uninvolved with politics, shy and devoted to studying architecture. [55], A video surfaced in October 2006. "[46][47] At the winter break in 1997, Atta left and did not return to Hamburg for three months. Records on Atta's cellphone indicated that he phoned the Moroccan embassy in Washington on January 2, just before Shehhi flew to the country. Mohamed Atta accepted and was in Germany two weeks later, in July. [16] Also in 1990, Atta's family moved into the eleventh floor of an apartment building in the Egyptian city of Giza. [16] Atta traveled twice to Las Vegas on "surveillance flights" rehearsing how the 9/11 attacks would be carried out. Hijackers in the September 11 attacks - Wikipedia Bin al-Shibh explained that he passed along instructions from Osama bin Laden, including his desire for the attacks to be carried out as soon as possible. Mohamed Atta is shown in this photo released Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001, in a State of Florida Division of Motor Vehicles photograph. Investigators believe the call was to confirm the attacks were ready to begin. Spanish investigators have said that Marwan al-Shehhi and two others later joined the meeting. At 2:43 p.m., Atta established an American Airlines "AAdvantage" profile #6H26L04 and reserved a business class seat on American Airlines Flight 11 departing Boston at 7:45 a.m. Reading airline charts and inquiring with the airline, he had determined that the flight would be in a Boeing 767-223ER plane, one that he had scouted and studied over months, taking numerous test flights to screen the plane and the boarding and security procedures. He led the team of hijackers who took control of American Airlines flight 11 and flew it into the north tower of New York City's World Trade Center. Then at 8:50pm, he checked into the Hotel Diana Cazadora in Barajas, a town near the airport. 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. This call was apparently to confirm that the attacks were ready to begin. Inside the 9/11 terrorists' Florida luxury hideaway - New York Post The 9/11 Commission Report speculated that the now-convicted terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was being trained as a possible replacement for Jarrah. Another theory is that the 9/11 ringleader was concerned about a last-minute weather glitch or traffic jam in Boston. During his time in the United States, Jarrah left five times to visit his wife in Germany and he constantly communicated with her, both over the phone and in email. The luggage included a copy of Atta's will, written in Arabic, as well as a list of instructions, called "The Last Night". 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. Atta flew Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The remains of the 9/11 killers are now held in deep freeze. Something is not right. Atta earned his private pilot certificate in September, and then he and Shehhi decided to switch flight schools. Undated photos of suspected hijackers of United Airlines flight #93 that crashed in rural Pennsylvania, released by the FBI September 27, 2001 in Washington, DC. 9/11 mystery: What was Atta doing on 9/10? - NBC News Mohamed Atta - Wikipedia Waterboarded at a CIA Black Site, the "Number One Terrorist" Gave Up a Name, A Florida Motel Manager Let the "Clean-cut" Guest Have an Overnight Visitor, Atta chose the day: A surveillance camera photographs suspected hijackers Mohammed Atta (R) and Abdulaziz Alomari (C) passing through airport security September 11, 2001 at Portland International Jetport in Maine. Atta and Shehhi then moved into a small house nearby in Nokomis where they stayed for six months. "[1][95], In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the names of the hijackers were released. It was here that the Hamburg cell developed and acted more as a group. Each day a new story will be published here. [38] Even before bin al-Shibh had arrived, Atta, Shehhi, and Jarrah were sent to the House of Ghamdi near bin Laden's home in Kandahar, where he was waiting to meet them. Atta checked in for American Airlines Flight 11, passed through security again, and boarded the flight. Statements entered at . [8] In his will, written in 1996, Atta gives his name as "Mohamed the son of Mohamed Elamir awad Elsayed". In mid-1998, Atta worked alongside Shehhi, bin al-Shibh, and Belfas, at a warehouse, packing computers in crates for shipping. [115], Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta, Mohamed Atta's first announcement, heard by ATC at 08:23, Mohamed Atta's second announcement at 08:33, sfn error: no target: CITEREFWright2006 (. What Was Flight 93's Target? - HISTORY 9/11 mastermind hijacker's mum claims he's still ALIVE and in Mohammed Atta, (born September 1, 1968, Kafr al-Shaykh, Egyptdied September 11, 2001, New York, New York, U.S.), Egyptian militant Islamist and al-Qaeda operative who helped plot and lead the September 11 attacks. TSA Timeline: How Travel And Airport Security Changed After 9/11 - NPR.org His father, who kept the family ever insulated, forbade young Atta to fraternize with the other children in their neighborhood. The Washington Post quoted a United States Air Force official who explained, "discrepancies in their biographical data, such as birth dates 20 years off, indicate we are probably not talking about the same people. identifies as one of the 19 hijackers, taxied a small private plane toward a runway when, unexpectedly, it stalled. [30][41] Atta returned to Hamburg on October 31, 1995,[40] only to join the pilgrimage to Mecca shortly thereafter. 9/11 hijackers were in plain sight in New Jersey before Sept. 11, 2001 "[113] In turn, political scientist Robert Pape has claimed that Atta was motivated by his commitment to the political cause, that he was psychologically normal, and that he was "not readily characterized as depressed, not unable to enjoy life, not detached from friends and society. One former flight instructor said a Federal Aviation Administration official placed an angry call on Dec. 27, threatening to investigate the maintenance record of the plane as well as the two pilots. By early 1999, Atta had completed his thesis, and formally defended it in August 1999.[47]. There seem to be two primary reasons for his choosing that particular day: that it fell after Labor Day when most Americans (and the George W. Bush administration) would be back at work, maximizing the impact in terms of killing people; and that it was a Tuesday when air travel was easier and the planes less full (that is, fewer hostile passengers to deal with). 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. After Jarrah's team hijacked Flight 93, flight attendants and passengers started making phone calls from the back of the plane.