Mohamed Atta

Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta (محمد محمد الأمير عوض السيد عطا; 1 September 1968 – 11 September 2001) was an Egyptian terrorist hijacker from 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 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center as part of the coordinated suicide attacks.

Aged 33, he was the oldest of the 19 hijackers who took part in the mission.

Atta was born on 1 September 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.

Born and raised in Egypt, Mohamed Atta studied architecture at Cairo University, graduating in 1990, and pursued postgraduate studies in Germany at the Hamburg University of Technology.

In Hamburg, Atta became involved with the al-Quds Mosque where he met Marwan al-Shehhi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Ziad Jarrah, together forming the Hamburg cell.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Atta graduated from Cairo University with marks insufficient for the graduate program.

As his father insisted that he go abroad for graduate studies, Atta, to this end, entered a German-language program at the Goethe-Institut in Cairo.

Atta returned to Hamburg in February 2000 and began inquiring about flight training in the United States, where he, Jarrah, and al-Shehhi arrived in June to learn how to pilot planes, obtaining instrument ratings in November.

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 11 September 2001, Atta and his team boarded and hijacked American Airlines Flight 11, which Atta crashed into 1 World Trade Center (the North Tower).

More than 1,600 people died as a result of the crash, 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.

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.