Mohammed Atta, a master’s student in Hamburg, terminates his employment with Hayes Computing Services, where he is working part-time. It is part of his process of disengaging from both his employers and university affiliations in anticipation of conducting jihad. At the time, his plan was to travel to Chechnya to fight the Russians.
Around June 1994, Atta took six months off from the architectural and planning consultancy he was working for in Hamburg to make his pilgrimage to Mecca. In 1997, he is believed to have gone to Afghanistan for the first time, having left his consultancy and returning to work in October 1998. He started part-time work with Hayes in August 1998.
In June 1999, Atta presented his final master’s thesis at the University of Hamburg-Harburg. Professors would later say that he was more strident than in earlier days and avoided shaking the hands of his female assessor. He has by then grown the beard of an Islamic holy man.