Ziad Jarrah - Mistaken Identity Claims

Mistaken Identity Claims

There have been claims that Jarrah was not a hijacker or that he was not present on the plane and his identity was stolen. It has been pointed out that his behavior deviated from the profile presented by the other hijackers and that the passengers reported three and not four hijackers. However, the October 2006 emergence of a “martyrdom” video shot on January 18, 2000, along with Mohamed Atta has cast heavy doubt on such claims.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, family and friends claimed that Jarrah did not exhibit the same “smoldering political resentments” or “cultural conservatism” as Mohamed Atta. He was not raised with a background of religious conviction and did not hold to an obviously conservative lifestyle. Personnel at the flight school Jarrah attended described him as “a normal person.” Jarrah called his family two days, and his girlfriend Aysel Sengün three hours, before boarding United 93; Sengün described the conversation as “pleasant” and “normal.” She also claimed that he never mentioned any names of the other hijackers. In his call two days before the attack, Jarrah told his family he would be coming home for a cousin’s wedding. “It makes no sense,” his uncle Jamal claimed. “He said he had even bought a new suit for the occasion.” Jarrah’s family in Lebanon claimed in September 2001 that he was an innocent passenger on the plane. His uncle, Jamal Jarrah, is currently a deputy in the Lebanese parliament, and a member of the Future Movement, a pro-Saudi political party led by Saad Hariri. On January 2, 2012, on a televised interview on Future TV, MP Jarrah denied his nephew's involvement in the 9-11 attacks, alluding to a conspiracy.

On October 23, 2001, John Ashcroft claimed that Jarrah had shared a Hamburg apartment with Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, though German authorities that same day told the Los Angeles Times that they had no evidence that any of Jarrah’s three apartments in Hamburg had been connected with the other hijackers. One high-ranking German police official stated, “The only information we have connecting the three Hamburg suspects is the FBI’s assertion that there is a connection.” In October 2006, however, a video surfaced showing Atta and Jarrah together in Afghanistan, clearly connecting Jarrah to the members of the Hamburg cell.

The 9/11 Commission concluded without qualification that Jarrah was a hijacker on the plane when it crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

In October 2006, an al-Qaeda video was released showing Jarrah and Mohamed Atta recording their wills in January 2000 in Osama Bin Laden’s Tarnak Farms base near Kandahar.