Planning of The September 11 Attacks - Hamburg Cell

Hamburg Cell

Mohamed Atta, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah came into the picture in 1999, when they arrived in Kandahar from Germany. The Hamburg cell was formed starting in 1998 shortly after Mohammed got approval by Al-Qaeda leadership for his plot. Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Said Bahaji, Zakariyah Essabar, and fifteen others were all members.

Mohamed Atta was very religious, but not fanatically so when he came to Germany in Fall 1992 to study urban planning at the Technical University of Hamburg. While in Germany, he was drawn to Al Quds Mosque in Hamburg, which adheres to a "harsh, uncompromisingly fundamentalist, and resoundingly militant" version of Sunni Islam. A friend of Atta's recalled meeting him at the Al-Quds mosque in 1993, though it is not known when he started going there. Atta had always lived as a strict Muslim. He went to Mecca in 1995, and returned to Germany as more of a Muslim fanatic. Also in late 1997, Mohamed Atta told his roommate that he was going to Mecca, but he most likely went to Afghanistan instead. Atta had already made his Mecca pilgrimage 18 months earlier. According to Al Jazeera journalist Yosri Fouda, Atta went to the mosque around this time "not to pray but to sign his death will." He is known to have attended Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000.

Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who also went under the name "Ramzi Omar", was a citizen of Yemen. In 1995, he came to Germany seeking asylum, claiming to be a political refugee from Sudan. The judge refused the asylum request, and bin al-Shibh returned to the Hadramawt region of Yemen. Bin al-Shibh later got a German visa under his real name, and came to Germany in 1997. There, he met Mohamed Atta, the leader of the Hamburg cell, at a mosque. For two years, Atta and bin al-Shibh were roommates in Germany. In late 1999, bin al-Shibh traveled to Kandahar in Afghanistan, where he received training at Al-Qaeda training camps, and met others involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. Original plans for the 9/11 attacks called for bin al-Shibh to be one of the hijacker pilots, along with Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah. From Hamburg, Germany, bin al-Shibh applied to take flight training in the United States. At that time, he also applied to Aviation Language Services, which provides language training for student pilots. Bin al-Shibh applied for an entry visa to the United States, four times, and was refused each time. He made visa applications in Germany on May 17, 2000, and again in June, on September 16, and October 25, 2000. According to the 9/11 Commission, this refusal of a visa was out of general concern by U.S. officials that people from Yemen would illegally overstay their visit and seek work in the United States. His friend, Zakariyah Essabar, was also denied visas. After he failed to enter the United States, bin al-Shibh took on more of a "coordinator" role in the plot, and a link between Atta in the United States and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Afghanistan.

Marwan al-Shehhi came to Bonn, Germany in 1996, on scholarship from the United Arab Emirates Army to study marine engineering. Al-Shehhi met Atta in 1997, and in 1998, he moved to Hamburg to join Atta and bin al-Shibh. As the son of a religiously trained father, al-Shehhi was very religious, well-educated in Islam, and adhered to a strict form of the faith. However, he had a friendlier, more humorous personality than Atta, who was very serious and more reclusive.

Ziad Jarrah came from Lebanon to Germany in April 1996, where he enrolled in a junior college in Greifswald. There, he met his girlfriend, Aysel Senguen, a medical student. By late 1996, Jarrah started to become radical in his religious views. In September 1997, he transferred to the Technical University of Hamburg to study aircraft engineering. In the summer of that year, he worked at a paint shop factory for Volkswagen in Wolfsburg.

Other members of the Hamburg cell included Said Bahaji, who came to Germany in 1995. He had been born there, but moved to Morocco at age 9. In 1996, Said Bahaji enrolled in the electrical engineering program at the technical university. He spent weekdays at a student home and weekends at the home of his aunt, Barbara Arens. Arens, his "high tech aunt", put a stop to the weekend visits when she saw his religious beliefs turn more radical.