why did mohamed atta crash the plane

The Israeli Supreme Court later overturned his extradition and set him free. The timing of the Afghanistan training was outlined on August 23, 2002, by a senior investigator. "[46][47] At the winter break in 1997, Atta left and did not return to Hamburg for three months. Shave excess hair from the body and wear cologne. [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. They had never been pictured together before. 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. 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. And that may have been what he was doing. They had problems following instructions and were both very upset when they failed their Stage 1 exam at Jones Aviation. Something is not right. ''I told them to forget it. 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. [110] In an interview on September 24, 2001, Atta Sr. stated, "My son is gone. The hijacked airliner came down . [57], On March 22, 2000, Atta was still in Germany when he sent an e-mail to the Academy of Lakeland in Florida. The two other "muscle men," intended to take over the plane, were also Saudi citizens: Abdulaziz al-Omari (A. al-Omari on the flight manifest) and Satam al-Suqami. Newsweek is reconstructing the road to 9/11 as it was constructed 20 years ago, day by day. 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. It was here that the Hamburg cell developed and acted more as a group. He mentioned Osama bin Laden and said "this man would someday be known as the world's greatest leader." He used his credit card to purchase two Swiss Army knives and some chocolate in a shop at the Zrich Airport. Atta was seated in business class, in seat 8D. Atta confirmed that all the muscle hijackers had arrived in the United States, without any problems, but said that he needed five to six more weeks to work out details. Unable to restart the engine, the two men shut the plane down, flipped off the lights and, by one account, walked off. He said he wanted to visit the World Trade Center and asked Bryant about the security there. 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 . It is only Jarrah's connection to Bin al-Shibh and others that would have connected him to any plot, including his attendance at the al Quds mosque in Hamburg. On September 11 we'll live tweet the events of the day, minute by minute, starting at 4:45 a.m. EST, @RoadTo911. [31][32] 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. [19] In 1992, his father had overheard a German couple who were visiting Egypt's capital. On 12 April 1986, Mahmoud Mahmoud Atta . She observed Muslim customs, taking taxis to and from the office so as not to come into close physical contact with men on buses. [45], After leaving Plankontor in the summer of 1997, Atta disappeared again and did not return until 1998. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. American Airlines Flight 11 was hijacked by five al Qaeda terrorists led by Mohamed Atta and was deliberately crashed into the North Tower (on the right) of the World Trade Center at 8:46am local . At this time, the pilots stopped responding to air traffic control, and the aircraft began deviating from the planned route. Ong provided information about lack of communication with the cockpit, lack of access to the cockpit, and passenger injuries. Nepal plane crash victim shared tragic online post moments before 68 passengers died. 17--Former federal terrorism investigators say a piece of luggage hastily checked in at the Portland, Maine, airport by a World Trade Center hijacker on the morning of Sept. 11 provided the . Atta's professor, Dittmar Machule, brought him along on an archaeological expedition to Aleppo in 1994. The FBI found a 9/11 hijacker's airplane ticket floating to the ground only moments after the north tower collapsed. In Germany, he enrolled in the urban planning graduate program at the Hamburg University of Technology. Just stay quiet and you will be OK. We are returning to the airport." 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. [6] Atta was not heard from again for nine minutes until 8:33:59, when he was heard to say: "Nobody move, please. Make an oath to die and renew your intentions. "[114] By contrast, criminal justice professor, Adam Lankford, has found evidence that indicated Atta was suicidal, and that his struggles with social isolation, depression, guilt, shame, hopelessness, and rage were extraordinarily similar to the struggles of those who commit conventional suicide and murder-suicide. Tuohey was the ticket agent at the Portland International Jetport who handed two of the terrorists - Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari - their boarding passes for an early morning flight to . By the time it took off, Mohammed Atta was just four minutes away from hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center. If you try to make any moves you'll endanger yourself and the airplane. 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? Atta flew Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. On September 11 we'll live tweet the events of the day, minute by minute, starting at 4:45 a.m. EST, @RoadTo911. [8][29] Among other odd jobs to supplement his income, Atta sometimes worked at a cleaning company and sometimes bought and sold cars. [79], On August 23, Atta's driver license was revoked in absentia after he failed to show up in traffic court to answer the earlier citation for driving without a license. Atta was believed to have used a payphone at the airport to phone a number "linked to al-Qaeda" after Qahtani was denied entry.[78]. . "[62][63] Bryant contacted the authorities after recognising Atta in news reports. Unidentified sources from both Al-Qaeda and the United States confirmed The Times the video's authenticity. [59] After obtaining his visa, Atta took a bus on June 2 from Hamburg to Prague where he stayed overnight before traveling on to the United States the next day. [109] The elder Mr. Atta said he had spoken with Mohamed by phone the day after on September 12, 2001. On December 29 and 30, Atta and Marwan went to the Opa-locka Airport where they practiced on a Boeing 727 simulator, and they obtained Boeing 767 simulator training from Pan Am International on December 31. They instead traveled to Afghanistan over a two-week period in late November. 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. [59][60], From July 13 to 16, Atta stayed at the Hotel Sant Jordi in Tarragona. 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. This claim has been disputed; Terry McDermott has argued that it is unusual for someone to go on pilgrimage so soon after the first time and to spend three months there (more than Hajj requires). They also discussed the personal difficulties Atta was having with fellow hijacker Ziad Jarrah. [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. The two al-Shehri brothers selected seats 2A and 2B in first class. 122 in Coral Springs, Florida, for $840 per month,[68] and assisted with the arrival of the muscle hijackers. This was the last transmission heard from Flight 11. 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. This included the construction of high-rise buildings in Cairo and other ancient cities in the region. A passenger revolt kept Flight 93 from hitting the Capitol. He is now with God. [39], On August 1, 1995, Atta returned to Egypt for three months of study. Newsweek is reconstructing the road to 9/11 as it was constructed 20 years ago, day by day. Jarrah was the first of the Hamburg group to enter the United States, settling in Venice, Florida, where he began flight training. [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. [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. 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). "He wanted to finance a twin-engine, six-passenger aircraft and remove the seats," Bryant told ABC's World News Tonight. The third hijacked plane, American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 that took off from Dulles Airport . "Nothing they said or did raised any suspicions at all," he told the commission's investigators. In the spring of 2000, Atta entered the United States and enrolled in an aviation school in Venice, Fla. On Sept. 10, 2001, Atta picked up another 9/11 terrorist, Abdul-Azzia Al-Omari, at the Milner Hotel in Boston. On the morning of September 11, Atta boarded American Airlines Flight 11, which he and his team then hijacked. [43], On April 11, 1996, Atta signed his last will and testament at the mosque, officially declaring his Muslim beliefs and giving 18 instructions regarding his burial. They were among the first to enter the U.S. in May and . . During the meeting, Atta and bin al-Shibh also decided on the targets to be hit, ruling out a strike on a nuclear plant. And they then took action, eventually making their way into the cockpit, forcing the plane down. During his trip to Las Vegas, he is thought to have used a video camera that he had rented from a Select Photo outlet back in Delray Beach, Florida. So, did Mohammed Atta go to Portland because of security issues? WASHINGTON - The tape of Betty Ong's voice yesterday, alive and urgent yet amazingly calm, describing through the background buzz how a group of hijackers had stabbed two . 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. Atta flew to Spain on January 4, 2001, to coordinate with bin al-Shibh and returned to the United States on January 10. 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. The two had arrived in the United States from Saudi Arabia in April 2001 and joined Atta's team. In the Czech Republic, some intelligence officials say the source of the purported meeting was an Arab informant who approached the Czech intelligence service with his sighting of Atta only after Atta's photograph had appeared in newspapers all over the world. Did he meet with somebody in Portland who helped him with the attack? 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. 1) Making an oath to die and renew your intentions. Some, like the 9/11 plot's ringleader, Mohamed Atta, flew in from Florida, checking into the King's Inn Motel in Wayne for a few days and then leaving and then returning days later. But Atta's night before 9-11 - which he spent in Portland, Main -- is a mystery that has puzzled terrorism experts for five years. Had Atta or any of these men been on international watchlists, their names would have been flagged upon making a domestic reservation. "[98], In the months following the September 11 attacks, officials at the Czech Interior Ministry asserted that Atta made a trip to Prague on April 8, 2001, to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent named Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. They learned of a massive terrorist attack underway, concluding that they had to take action to down the plane: it was not being hijacked to land and for demands to be made. Thirty minutes later, Marwan al-Shehhi hit the South Tower. We will examine that 9/11 mystery in our next report. They drove to Cambrils, where they spent a night at the Hotel Monica. 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. "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. Atta sent 5060 similar e-mails to other flight training schools in the United States. Bryant said "the picture that came out in the newspaper, that's exactly what that man looked like. You may have heard about recently. Jarrah had arrived in the United States on June 27, 2000, after his flight landed at Newark, New Jersey, and Jarrah had decided to go with Shehhi and Atta to search for different flight schools in the US. Had his conversations been monitored, the NSA would have heard the conversations of a husband and wife, talking about day-to-day life, in the German language, probably raising no suspicions. 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. The Web . In January, after flying from Miami to Madrid, he was allowed to re-enter the United States despite overstaying his previous visa. Mohammed Atta, 33, and Marwan al-Shehhi, 23, piloted the planes that hit the World Trade Center, the North and South Towers, respectively. [73] The absence of other hotel stays, signed receipts or credit card stubs has led investigators to believe that the men may have met in a safe house provided by other al-Qaeda operatives in Spain.

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