9/11 Special: Part 2 - The men from Hamburg
This is part 2 of The Four Planes, a 4-part series that pieces together the events that led to the 9/11 attacks. Today’s article explores the lives of the men who became the foot soldiers of 9/11. It’s a story about a group of seemingly ordinary young men who, alone in a foreign society and many miles away from their families, steered their lives down a dark path.
I hope you have a cup of coffee ☕️ ready. Enjoy.
Last week’s article was about the origins of the 9/11 plot and ended with the meeting between Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind behind 9/11, and Osama bin Laden. If you want to get up to speed (recommended but not needed to follow today’s story), here are the previous articles:
KSM’s initial ideas for the attack were even more grandiose and theatrical than what eventually unfolded on 9/11. He originally planned on hijacking ten planes with targets on both coasts of the U.S. In addition to the targets attacked on 9/11, he intended to crash planes into the CIA and FBI headquarters, nuclear power plants and the tallest buildings in California and Washington. KSM aspired to be the superstar of the plot by piloting one of the planes himself, but rather than crash it, he would kill all the men aboard, and upon landing, make a speech denouncing the U.S. policies in the Middle East. Bin Laden, a proponent of simplicity, scrapped the grand plan, opting instead for a trimmed version with only four planes.
Bin Laden originally identified four men to carry out the attacks. Two of them, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were from Saudi Arabia and were both experienced soldiers who had been to Afghanistan numerous times. Importantly, both men had U.S. visas. The other two prospective attackers were from Yemen, Saudia Arabia’s poorer neighbour - a country not rich in oil reserves. Both Yemeni men were Al-Qaeda veterans. One of them joined the organisation at the age of 15, had lost his leg in battle and served as Bin Laden’s bodyguard. However, the U.S. visa applications for both Yemeni men were rejected due to concerns from U.S. authorities that they were economic migrants. This left Bin Laden and KSM on the lookout for new soldiers.
But late in 1999, four ambitious jihadists arrived in Afghanistan from Hamburg, Germany. With a Muslim population of 5%, many mosques were scattered around Hamburg, but one was known as the most radical. Perched above a bodybuilding gym in a sleazy part of the city, Al Quds mosque advocated a fundamentalist and militant version of Islam, glorifying martyrdom. Outsiders frequently reported witnessing drastic changes in worshippers within a few months of joining the mosque. It’s here where the men that would become known as the “Hamburg cell” met and fostered their radical ideals. They were fluent in English and familiar with life in the West, which along with their hatred for the U.S., made them the perfect soldiers for the 9/11 plot. Their names were Mohamed Atta, Ramzi Binalshibh, Marwan al Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah.
Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta was born in a small village in Egypt in 1968 and moved to Cairo at age 10. His father was an attorney who ran a strict household. Fun and entertainment were taboo. It was a house of study. Atta excelled at school, and so too did his two older sisters, Anna and Mono. Anna would become a cardiologist and Mono, a professor of zoology. Although his father was a devout Muslim, he steered clear of political Islam. Atta studied English and German at his father’s suggestion, who also recommended that Atta furthered his studies in Europe after studying architecture at the University of Cairo.
So in 1992, Atta moved to Hamburg where he enrolled in a city engineering and planning course at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. Although Atta was a devout Muslim when he arrived in Hamburg, he was far from being a fundamentalist. But the liberal life in the West was an eye-opener for Atta, with sex and alcohol openly on display. Added to this, he had a cold and heavy demeanour and struggled to make friends. In these circumstances, he found refuge in religion. He prayed five times a day, observed a strict halal diet and visited the Al Quds mosque whenever possible. He didn’t listen to music, watch movies or like sports. He didn’t even like eating. He was rarely seen laughing, and his youthful college roommates couldn’t stand him.
At Al Quds, Atta gave classes on Friday and Sunday evenings and became friends with Ramzi Binalshibh, a fellow teacher at the mosque. Binalshibh was born in Yemen in 1972, and there was little remarkable about his upbringing. His family were considered religious, but not particularly so. Amongst his siblings, he was considered to be his mother’s favourite. Lighthearted and friendly, he was a much more likeable character than Atta.
Binalshibh had dreams of studying in the U.S. or Europe but had very few options to do so legitimately. After his U.S. visa application was rejected, he set his sights on Germany, which in the 90s received over 100 000 asylum seekers per year, thanks largely to the country’s generous welfare provisions. He first entered Germany in 1995 seeking asylum, falsely claiming to be a university student from Sudan fleeing persecution. With his asylum application pending, he was allowed to settle in Hamburg, where he stayed until 1997 when his application was denied. He returned to Hamburg shortly thereafter though, after obtaining a student visa through some ingenuity.
Binalshibh and Atta struck up a strong connection at Al Quds. Along with other men, they spent all their time thinking, talking, arguing, and reading about Islam.
The son of an affluent family, Ziad Jarrah was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1975. The family’s attitude towards Islam was relaxed. The men drank whiskey, and the ladies wore bikinis to the beach. Jarrah attended a Christian school and sometimes even attended church services with a family friend. After completing high school, his family encouraged him to study abroad and gave him the option of going either to Germany or Canada. Jarrah wanted to be closer to home, so he chose Germany.
He enrolled at the University of Greifswald in 1996, where he soon started dating a young woman named Aysel Sengün, a dentistry student and the daughter of Turkish immigrants. Their early days at Greifswald were lighthearted and fun. Jarrah was known as a partygoer and beer drinker, an unlikely candidate for an Islamic extremist.
His first few Fridays attending mosque were followed by beers with friends, but he progressively became more religious. Jarrah started living more strictly according to the Quran, and he began reading a radical Islamist publication called Al Jihad. During his first trip home to his family in Beirut, they took note and became concerned about his change in demeanour.
In 1997 he decided to change his studies and enrolled in aircraft engineering at the Technical University of Hamburg—Harburg and moved to Hamburg without Sengün. In Hamburg, his progressive radicalisation intensified. He too attended Al Quds mosque where he befriended Binalshibh. He grew a beard, prayed frequently, and his visits to Sengün became less frequent. Jarrah refused to introduce Sengün to his friends in Hamburg due to her unwillingness to adopt a more conservative Islamic way of life. But despite the distance and differing views about religion, they continued to date.
In 1996 another man from the Middle East made his way to Germany. Marwan al Shehhi was born in the United Arab Emirates in 1978 and enrolled at the University of Bonn to study marine engineering after receiving a scholarship from the UAE Army. Those who knew him described him as an easygoing, well-educated and funny man. Unlike Atta, he had a good appetite that was reflected in his plump physique.
Al Shehhi moved from Bonn to Hamburg in 1998 to further his studies at the Technical University. It remains unclear, but it seems that he already knew Atta and Binalshibh before relocating, as by April the three men were living together in an apartment at 54 Marienstrasse. Al Shehhi, whose father led prayers at the local mosque, was already a religious man with a deep knowledge of Islamic scriptures. Moving in with Atta and Binalshibh took him a few steps closer to Islamic fundamentalism.
The concept of jihad commonly took on two forms within Islam. The most common was a person’s daily struggle for their own soul, similar to most religions. According to religious texts, “The best jihad is the one who strives against his own self for Allah, the Mighty and Majestic”. The second form of jihad was broader than the personal realm, propagating a fight against the enemies of Islam. According to the Quran: “Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loves not transgressors.” Conventionally, this notion of jihad was interpreted as defensive and not offensive, suggesting that Muslims must only protect themselves and their land. But radical interpretations were more offensive, regarding all non or less devout Muslims as enemies of Islam that proactively had to be destroyed.
Outside of Al Quds mosque, the apartment at 54 Marienstrasse became the meeting place for Hamburg’s young jihadis, who referred to it as “Dar el Ansar”, or “house of the followers”. The men who met there were obsessed with the jihad. The Jews were considered the biggest enemy and, thanks to its support of Israel and its military presence in the Middle East, so too was America and its citizens. Amongst the men, a belief grew that Islam was under attack and that they were obliged to defend it as holy warriors.
What was happening elsewhere in the world supported their cause. In 1998 Osama Bin Laden had issued his second fatwa (religious decree), again publically declaring war against the U.S. and bolstering his image amongst jihadis. Then, later that year, Al-Qaeda pulled off its first major attack, bombing the US embassies in Nairobi (Kenya) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), killing over 200 people.
The time had come for the men to put their beliefs into action. The initial plan was to join Muslim separatists fighting Russians in Chechnya, but an Al-Qaeda recruiter they had met in Germany urged them to go to Afghanistan instead. In preparation, the men starting tying up loose ends. They cancelled apartment leases and granted powers of attorney for their bank accounts to acquaintances. Jarrah married Sengün, and al Shehhi returned to the UAE to marry a woman of his family’s choosing.
In 1999, travelling on separate routes and flights, al Shehhi departed Hamburg for Afghanistan followed by Atta, Jarrah and Binalshibh. They travelled through Pakistan to a town on the border with Afghanistan, where they met at a Taliban guesthouse. Here they were instructed to leave all their belongings behind, including clothing, money, passports and even their names, as each man was given a nom de guerre (war name). Their lives were about to change irreversibly.
Once in Afghanistan, they met Bin Laden at his residence in Kandahar. Here Bin Laden asked the men to pledge loyalty to him, and more importantly, to commit to being martyrs for an assignment he had planned for them.
They were about to walk through a one-way door and sacrifice their lives in commitment to the holy war.
Please tune in next week for the story of how these young jihadis made it to the U.S. and prepared for the most notorious terror attack in history.
Sources:
I compiled this story from multiple sources, but I relied mostly on these. If you’d like to read more about 9/11, they are all highly recommended.
Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It by Terry McDermott
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda's Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 by Mitchell Zuckoff
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2004)
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