Ziad Samir Jarrah (May 11, 1975September 11, 2001) was a Lebanese engineering student and terrorist hijacker for al-Qaeda. He was one of four hijackers who hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 as part of the September 11 attacks. The flight, which was traveling from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew attempted to regain control of the aircraft, preventing the hijackers from reaching their intended target.
Jarrah was born in a secular and wealthy family living in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. In 1996, he moved to Germany to study aerospace engineering at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. In Hamburg, he became part of a clandestine cell system known as the Hamburg cell with fellow hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, among many others. In 1999, member Ramzi bin al-Shibh took the cell to Afghanistan to meet al-Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, where they were instructed to receive flight training. In 2000, Jarrah enrolled in a flight school in Florida.
In September 2001, Jarrah, Ahmed al-Haznawi, Ahmed al-Nami, and Saeed al-Ghamdi boarded Flight 93 at Newark International Airport. Mid-flight, they took control of the cockpit, injuring or killing the pilots, and Jarrah began flying it towards Washington, D.C. His group likely planned to crash the flight into either the U.S. Capitol or the White House. Their plan was thwarted when the passengers then tried storming the cockpit to take back the plane, which caused it to crash in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board who was still alive.
Early life Ziad Samir Jarrah was born on May 11, 1975, in the Mazraa neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon.9/11 Commission Report (PDF), p. 180. He was raised by a wealthy and respected Arab family at an apartment in Beirut's working class neighborhood of Tanak, and a house with a 25-acre farm in the rural town of Marj. He went to school in the city. Jarrah's father Samir worked for the Lebanese government as a social service inspector, while his mother Nafissa was a principal at an elementary school. His uncle Jamal later became a banker, a campaigner for Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and a member of the Parliament of Lebanon. In his youth, Jarrah played football and trained in martial arts. He also expressed a strong interest in pursuing aviation, the latter of which his family opposed. His father later recalled: "I stopped him from being a pilot. I only have one son and I was afraid that he would crash."
Jarrah grew up amidst fighting in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), which saw religiously motivated conflict between Muslim, Christian, and Druze populations. Syria, Israel, the United States, France, and Italy also sent troops to the country. The St. Petersburg Times Sydney Freedberg wrote that Lebanon went from a peaceful country to "a bloody orgy of assassinations, car bombings, kidnappings and massacres". Tanak was near the front lines of Muslim and Christian factions, and its residents learned to avoid sniper fire. When it was safe, Jarrah's family would take him out to Marj, to "release pent-up tensions" caused by the warfare. During the war, Marj's surrounding Beqaa Valley developed a reputation among analysts as a "haven for [Muslim] terrorists", while Jarrah was neither passionate about Islam nor politically extremist then. Although his parents were self-described Sunnis, they did not significantly observe Islamic customs, and his mother worked at a Christian school.
In 1995 and 1996, while Jarrah is officially known to have lived in Lebanon, a person bearing his name rented an apartment in Brooklyn in New York City. Following the 2001 death of Lebanon's Jarrah, the apartment's landlords identified the tenant Jarrah as matching photographs of the former released by the FBI.
Education Sources disagree on Jarrah's level of intelligence and success in schooling across his life. According to one of his teachers in Beirut, he had below-average grades. However, his cousin Assem said of his college studies in Greifswald, Germany: "No, normal is not the right word. Ziad was brilliant. He finished his language course in two semesters when it usually takes four. Ziad was ambitious and wanted to establish himself." The 9/11 Commission Report (2004) and Jarrah's fiancée Aysel Şengün claimed that by the end of his life, he learned to speak at least four languages at a high level: Arabic, French, German, and English.National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Ben-Veniste, Richard; Fielding, Fred F.; Gorelick, Jamie; Gorton, Slade; Hamilton, Lee H.; Kean, Thomas; Kerrey, Bob; Lehman, John F.; Roemer, Timothy J.; Thompson, James R.) (2004). The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. W.W. Norton & Company. , also available online However, he might have been lying to people about the extent of his English skills. Most children in Tanak went to an affordable Islamic school in the neighborhood named al-Farouk. However, starting in 1981, Jarrah attended an expensive Christian school, al-Hikmeh, in an upper middle class neighborhood of east Beirut named Achrafieh. In 1986 and 1987, his commute to al-Hikmeh saw sniper activity, as it was nearby the neighborhood of Sabra and the Shatila refugee camp, which became targets in the war due to their Palestinian refugee populations. His childhood friend, Ziad Touba, later recalled:
Jarrah later enrolled at Mar Elias Batina, another costly school, in the western neighborhood of Wata al-Msaytbeh. In the 1990s, his parents forced him out of their home, while giving him a choice of studying in Germany or Canada. He felt Canada was too far away, and he predicted his parents would ask him to marry a cousin of his that lived there. In April 1996, after obtaining a student visa, Jarrah moved into an apartment in Germany so he could enroll in a German-language certificate program at the nearby University of Greifswald. A course in the language was a prerequisite for non-native speakers pursuing higher education in the country.
He lived in Greifswald with his cousins Assem and Salim Ghazi Jarrah. Assem, who was staying in Germany while his wife worked on a gynecology degree, was put in charge of the other two. He said of Ziad that, aside from doing well in school, "he was also a playboy, who loved women, discos, and bars. He often remarked how stuck in the 1950s Greifswald was." Jarrah then formed a close friendship with Aysel Şengün, a German citizen of Turkish descent studying dentistry. They had a romantic relationship for the rest of his life, and briefly lived together. Jarrah then planned to study dentistry as well.
Radicalization Şengün later recalled that after Jarrah returned to Greifswald from a trip to Beirut in winter 1996, "he seemed changed". He was more somber, and started reading al-Jihad, a radical Islamist publication. He also started visiting Greifswald's mosque, becoming friends with the proprietor, Abdul Rahman al-Makhadi. He was a Yemeni man who enforced behavior compliant with Islamic morality among the visitors, and became a local "spokesman for radical Islam". He was also being surveilled by German intelligence for giving money to Hamas. He and Jarrah traveled across Germany, and he introduced Jarrah to his Muslim friends. One of them, a man known as Marcel "Hussein" K., was the vice president of the Münster Islamic Centre in North Rhine-Westphalia, and he became Jarrah's confidant for the rest of Jarrah's life. In 2000 and 2001, he would often call Marcel for advice right before he made important decisions.
In September 1997, Jarrah moved to Hamburg to pursue a degree in aerospace engineering at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. This was a sudden change from his plan to enter dentistry; he explained to Şengün that he was interested in aviation since he was a kid, and to Assem that no medical school would accept him. Concurrently, he worked at a Volkswagen paint shop in nearby Wolfsburg. Jarrah started visiting the al-Quds Mosque, which preached Salafi Islam. There, he met a group of friends who also enforced Islamic morality among the visitors. Jarrah himself started enforcing it with Şengün, criticizing her friends and clothes. He made her wear a veil, demanded she cover her hands, and did not let her meet any of his friends. Their arguments caused them to separate, but they later got back together. In early 1999, Jarrah told her there was no greater honor in life than dying for Allah, and that he was going to wage jihad, which scared her. Meanwhile, he stopped writing home. Jarrah's extremist behavior concerned his family, who sent "emissaries" to his location to plead with him to return to Beirut. His father also threatened to cut off his monthly allowance of $2000.
Hamburg cell
By meeting people at the mosque, Jarrah joined the Hamburg cell, a clandestine cell system of Islamist terrorists whose members eventually committed or planned al-Qaeda's September 11 attacks against the United States. Nineteen hijackers, including Jarrah, hijacked four American commercial flights as part of the September 11 attacks. American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were flown into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, while American Airlines Flight 77 was flown into the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. Jarrah was the hijacker-pilot of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew attempted to regain control of the aircraft, preventing the hijackers from reaching their intended target. 2,977 people were killed as a result of the attacks. The plan for the attack was formulated by Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The cell's leader was Mohamed Atta, who moved to Hamburg for education, just like Jarrah and members Marwan al-Shehhi and Zakariya Essabar. Atta was the eventual hijacker-pilot of Flight 11, and al-Shehhi, the hijacker-pilot of Flight 175. The other members were Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Abdelghani Mzoudi, Ahmed Taleb, Mamoun Darkazanli, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, Mounir el-Motassadeq, Naamen Meziche, and Said Bahaji. Jarrah's closest friend in the group was bin al-Shibh. Bahaji and Zammar have both been described as the one who brought them all together.
In late 1999, the cell decided to travel to Chechnya, to help jihadist rebels fight Russia's forces in the Second Chechen War. Right before they went, however, Khalid al-Masri and Mohamedou Ould Slahi persuaded them to instead travel to Afghanistan. Jarrah called Marcel K. before going. Jarrah, Atta, al-Shehhi, and bin al-Shibh then entered Afghanistan separately to meet with al-Qaeda's leaders, including bin Laden. They were taught how to be jihadist terrorists, and were briefed on the plan to hijack American airliners. Some of the members eventually met up there. A video with the timestamp of January 8, 2000, shows Jarrah, Atta, bin al-Shibh, and others watching bin Laden speak at al-Qaeda's Tarnak Farms base. Another video, timestamped January 18, shows Jarrah and Atta stating their last wills and testaments, and discussing unspecified sheets of paper on the floor next to them; the discussion is inaudible. Şengün did not completely know about Jarrah's trip, but told his family that she feared he had gone to Afghanistan.
Planning of the September 11 attacks
Return to Hamburg The Hamburg cell members who visited Afghanistan eventually returned to Hamburg to start working on the hijacking plan. After Jarrah returned, he explained to Şengün and his family that he had simply been moving his belongings from Greifswald to Hamburg. The cell worked out the plan's details in Atta's apartment while Bahaji, bin al-Shibh, and Essabar lived there at different points. It is debatable if Jarrah lived there as well.