Mohamed Atta's Alleged Prague Connection - Two Different Attas

Two Different Attas

Until late 2004, many believed that Atta traveled to Prague for one day on May 30, 2000. Nobody claimed he had met al-Ani at that time, but conservative columnist Andrew C. McCarthy wrote in the National Review that his trip was considered suspicious. Atta was apparently detained because he did not have a travel visa but was not picked up on airport surveillance.

However, the Chicago Tribune reported in August 2004 that it was a different Atta who traveled to Prague in May 2000 — a Pakistani businessman also named Mohammed Atta, who spells his name differently from the hijacker — and was turned away because he lacked a visa. The hijacker Mohamed Atta — whose travel papers were in order — went to the Prague airport a couple days later on his way to Newark, creating confusion for some:

On June 2, the hijacker Mohamed Atta, who had a visa, arrived in Prague by bus from Cologne, Germany, and flew to Newark the next day. Video surveillance cameras at a Prague bus terminal showed him playing slot machines at the station's Happy Days Casino before disappearing.

The confusion over the two different Attas "had serious consequences," according to Czech reporter Brian Kenety, "as it laid the groundwork for spurious claims by Czech authorities of a secret meeting in Prague between Atta the hijacker and an Iraqi intelligence agent."

The Chicago Tribune on 29 September 2004 also reported that a man from Pakistan named Mohammed Atta (spelling his name with two "m's" rather than one) flew to the Czech Republic in 2000, confusing the intelligence agency, who thought it was the same Mohamed Atta. In September 2004, Jiří Růžek, the former head of the BIS, told the Czech newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes, "This information was verified, and it was confirmed that it was a case of the same name. That is all that I recall of it." (3 September 2004).

Opposition leaders in the Czech Republic have publicly called this a failure on the part of Czech intelligence. In hopes of resolving the issue, Czech officials hoped to be given access to information from the U.S. investigation but that cooperation was not forthcoming. In May 2004, the Czech newspaper Právo speculated that the source of the information behind the rumored meeting was actually the discredited INC chief Ahmed Chalabi.