Muhammad Atta

Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta ( ; ar, محمد محمد الأمير عوض السيد عطا ; September 1, 1968 – September 11, 2001) was an Egyptian hijacker and the ringleader of the September 11 attacks in 2001 in which four United States airliners were commandeered with the intention of destroying specific civilian, military, and governmental targets. 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. At 33 years of age, he was the oldest of the 19 hijackers who took part in the attacks. Atta was directly responsible for the deaths of more than 1,600 people during the attacks.

Born and raised in Egypt, Atta studied architecture at Cairo University, graduating in 1990, and continued his studies in Germany at the Hamburg University of Technology. In Hamburg, Atta became involved with the al-Quds Mosque, where he met Marwan al-Shehhi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, together forming the Hamburg cell. 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. Atta and the other Hamburg cell members were recruited by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for a "planes operation" in the United States. Atta returned to Hamburg in February 2000, and began inquiring about flight training in the United States.

In June 2000, Atta, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan al-Shehhi arrived in the United States to learn how to pilot planes, obtaining instrument ratings in November. Beginning in May 2001, Atta assisted with the arrival of the muscle hijackers, and in July he traveled to Spain to meet with bin al-Shibh to finalize the plot. In August 2001, Atta traveled as a passenger on several "surveillance" flights, to establish in detail how the attacks could be carried out.

On the morning of September 11, Atta boarded American Airlines Flight 11, which he and his team then hijacked. Atta took control of the plane and crashed it into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. The crash led to the collapse of the tower and the deaths of more than 1,600 people.

Aliases

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". 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. In his will, written in 1996, Atta gives his name as "Mohamed the son of Mohamed Elamir awad Elsayed". Atta also claimed different nationalities, sometimes Egyptian and other times telling people he was from the United Arab Emirates.

Early life

Atta was born on September 1, 1968, in Kafr el-Sheikh, located in Egypt's Nile Delta region. His father, Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta, was a lawyer, educated in both sharia and civil law. His mother, Bouthayna Mohamed Mustapha Sheraqi, came from a wealthy farming and trading family and was also educated. Bouthayna and Mohamed married when she was 14, via an arranged marriage. The family had few relatives on the father's side and kept their distance from Bouthayna's family. In-laws characterized the father of Atta as "austere, strict, and private," and neighbors viewed the family as reclusive.McDermott (2005), p. 9-11 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.

When Atta was ten, his family moved to the Cairo neighborhood of Abdeen, situated near the city center. His father, who kept the family ever insulated, forbade young Atta to fraternize with the other children in their neighborhood. Having little else to do, he mostly studied at home and easily excelled in school.McDermott (2005), p. 12-14 In 1985, Atta enrolled at Cairo University and focused his studies on engineering. He was among the highest-scoring students; by his senior year, he was admitted to an exclusive architecture program. After he graduated in 1990 with an architecture degree, he joined the Engineers Syndicate, an organization under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood. He then worked for several months at the Urban Development Center in Cairo, where he joined various building projects and dispatched diverse architectural tasks. Also in 1990, Atta's family moved into the eleventh floor of an apartment building in the Egyptian city of Giza.

Atta also got engaged to a woman lined up by his father and her family in Cairo, at late 1999, after coming back from Germany the same year. Although the marriage never happened, Atta's father mentioned they liked each other.

Germany

Atta graduated from Cairo University with marks insufficient for the graduate program. 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. In 1992, his father had overheard a German couple who were visiting Egypt's capital. The couple explained at dinner that they ran an exchange program and invited Atta to continue his studies in Germany; they also offered him room and board at their home in the city. Mohamed Atta accepted and was in Germany two weeks later, in July.

In Germany, he enrolled in the urban planning graduate program at the Hamburg University of Technology. Atta initially lived with two high school teachers; however, they eventually found his closed-mindedness and introverted personality to be too much for them. Atta began adhering to the strictest Islamic diet, frequenting the most conservative mosques, socializing seldom, and acting disdainfully towards the couple's unmarried daughter who had a young child. After six months, they asked him to leave.

By early 1993, Atta had moved into university housing with two roommates, in Centrumshaus. He stayed there until 1998. During that period, his roommates grew annoyed with him. He seldom bathed, and they could not bear his "complete, almost aggressive insularity".McDermott (2005), p. 25 He kept to himself to such an extent that he would often react to simple greetings with silence.

Academic studies

At the Hamburg University of Technology, Atta studied under the guidance of the department chair, Dittmar Machule, who specialized in the Middle East. Atta was averse to modern development. This included the construction of high-rise buildings in Cairo and other ancient cities in the region. 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. Atta's family moved into an apartment block in 1990; it was to him but "a shabby symbol of Egypt's haphazard attempts to modernize and its shameless embrace of the West." For his thesis, Atta concentrated on the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo. He researched the history of the urban landscape in relation to the general theme of conflict between Arab and modern civilization. He criticized how the newfangled skyscrapers and other modernizing projects were disrupting the fabric of communities by blocking common streets and altering the skyline.

Atta's professor, Dittmar Machule, brought him along on an archaeological expedition to Aleppo in 1994. 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. While in Syria, he met Amal, a young Palestinian woman who worked for a planning bureau in the city. Volker Hauth, who was traveling with Atta, described Amal as "attractive and self-confident. She observed Muslim customs, taking taxis to and from the office so as not to come into close physical contact with men on buses. But she was also said to be 'emancipated' and 'challenging'. Atta and Amal appeared to be attracted to each other, but Atta soon decided that "she had a quite different orientation and that the emancipation of the young lady did not fit." His nascent infatuation with her, begrudgingly realised, was the closest thing Atta knew to romance. In mid-1995, he stayed for three months in Cairo, on a grant from the Carl Duisberg Society, along with fellow students Volker Hauth and Ralph Bodenstein. The academic team inquired into the effects of redevelopment in the Islamic Cairo, the old quarter, which the government undertook to remodel for tourism. Atta stayed in Cairo awhile with his family after Hauth and Bodenstein flew back to Germany.McDermott (2005), p. 29-31Corbin (2003), p. 122

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. He was let go from the firm in 1997, however, because its business had declined and "his draughtsmanship was not needed" after it bought a CAD system. Among other odd jobs to supplement his income, Atta sometimes worked at a cleaning company and sometimes bought and sold cars. 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. Further, after the Egyptian government had imprisoned droves of political activists, he knew better than to trust it not to target him too, with his social and political beliefs being such as they were.

Religious zeal and Hamburg cell

After coming to Hamburg in 1992, Atta grew more religiously fanatical and frequented the mosque with greater regularity. His friends in Germany described him as an intelligent man in whom religious convictions and political motives held equal sway. 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. He was also angry and bitter at the elite in his native Egypt, who he believed hoarded power for themselves, as well as at the Egyptian government, that cracked down on the dissident Muslim Brotherhood. Atta was anti-Semitic, believing that Jews controlled the world's media, financial, and political institutions from New York City. 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.

On August 1, 1995, Atta returned to Egypt for three months of study.Fouda and Fielding (2003), p. 82 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. Atta returned to Hamburg on October 31, 1995, only to join the pilgrimage to Mecca shortly thereafter.

In Hamburg, Atta was intensely drawn to al-Quds Mosque which adhered to a "harsh, uncompromisingly fundamentalist, and resoundingly militant" version of Sunni Islam. He made acquaintances at al-Quds; some of whom visited him on occasion at Centrumshaus. He also began teaching classes both at Al-Quds and at a Turkish mosque near the Harburg district. Atta also started and led a prayer group, which Ahmed Maklat and Mounir El Motassadeq joined. Ramzi bin al-Shibh