Mohamed Atta (September 1, 1968 September 11, 2001) was an Egyptian engineer, architect, and terrorist hijacker for al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, he was the ringleader of the September 11 attacks and served as the hijacker-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, which he flew into the North Tower of the original World Trade Center as part of coordinated suicide attacks. Aged thirty-three years, he was the oldest of the 19 hijackers who took part in the mission. Before the attacks, he worked as a civil engineer.
Born and raised in Egypt, Atta studied architecture at Cairo University, graduating in 1990, and pursued postgraduate studies in Germany at the Hamburg University of Technology. In Hamburg, Atta attended prayers at the al-Quds Mosque where he met Marwan al-Shehhi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Ziad Jarrah, with whom he formed 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 flying training in the United States, where he, Jarrah, and al-Shehhi arrived in June to learn how to pilot planes; Atta obtained his instrument rating in November and his commercial pilot's license in December. Beginning in May 2001, Atta assisted with the arrival of the "muscle" hijackers whose role was to subdue passengers and crew to enable the hijacker-pilots to take over. In July, Atta traveled to Spain to meet with bin al-Shibh to finalize the plot, then in August traveled as a passenger on "surveillance" flights to establish in detail how the attacks could be carried out.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Atta and his team boarded and hijacked American Airlines Flight 11, which Atta flew into 1 World Trade Center (the North Tower). More than 1,600 people died as a result of the impact, ensuing fire, and subsequent collapse of the tower, making him responsible for the single deadliest air crash of all time, as well as the single deadliest terrorist attack of all time.
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". He was known as Abd al-Rahman al-Misri by al-Qaeda. Atta also claimed different nationalities, sometimes Egyptian and other times telling people he was from the United Arab Emirates. During his flight training in Florida, he claimed to be a member of the Saudi royal family.
Early life Mohamed Atta was born on September 1, 1968, in Kafr el-Sheikh, located in the Nile Delta region of Egypt (then a part of the United Arab Republic). His father, Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta, was a lawyer, educated in both civil law and sharia. His mother, Buthayna Mohamed Mustafa Shiraqi, came from a wealthy farming and trading family and was also educated. Buthayna 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 Buthayna's family. In-laws characterized Atta's father as "austere, strict, and private", and neighbors viewed the family as reclusive. 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. 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. 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, in late 1999, after coming back from Germany the same year. Although the marriage never happened, Atta's father said they liked each other.
Germany
Atta graduated from Cairo University with marks insufficient for the graduate program. His father insisted that he go abroad for graduate studies, so Atta entered a German-language program at the Goethe-Institut in Cairo. In 1992, his father 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. Atta accepted and arrived 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 rarely bathed, and they could not bear his "complete, almost aggressive insularity". 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 skyscrapers and other modernizing projects disrupted 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 for a while with his family after Hauth and Bodenstein flew back to Germany.
While in Hamburg, Atta held several positions, including a part-time job at the urban planning firm Plankontor 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 visited 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, and in particular the Oslo Accords and the Gulf War. 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 antisemitic, 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, as he believed that Monica Lewinsky was a Jewish agent influencing American president 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. Before this trip he grew out a beard to show himself as a devout Muslim and also to make a political gesture. 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 began teaching classes both at al-Quds and at a Turkish mosque near the Harburg district. Atta started and led a prayer group, which Ahmed Maklat and Mounir el-Motassadeq joined. He became friends with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who also occasionally taught classes.