Tag: Germany

29 November 1999

Posted on by William Arkin
Khalden terrorist training camp

 

Mohammed Atta travels from Hamburg, Germany to Karachi, Pakistan via Istanbul, spending the night in Turkey. Despite the African embassy bombings in August 1998, American military retaliation, and CIA covert operations, he and his compatriots have no trouble reaching Afghanistan.

Atta is already the leader of the Hamburg Four, and together with Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah, and Ramzi Binalshibh, they travel to Kandahar and then on to Khalden camp, where they meet with the al Qaeda operational commander Abu Hafs (Mohammed Atef) and Osama bin Laden. Abu Hafs spotted them immediately as special, according to various accounts, especially the three who would go on to pilot the 9/11 planes (Atta, al-Shehhi and Jarrah). They were educated, had technical skills, could speak English, and had learned how to live in the West. They also came from countries—Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates—where they wouldn’t have trouble obtaining U.S. visas. By the time they leave Afghanistan, they have their broad assignments.

1 November 1998

Posted on by William Arkin
54 Marienstrasse in Hamburg, Germany

 

Mohammed Atta, Said Bahaji and Ramzi Binalshibh move into a four bedroom apartment at 54 Marienstrasse in Hamburg, Germany. It becomes known as the house of martyrs and over the 28 months that Atta’s name is on the lease, 29 Middle Eastern and North African men live in the apartment or register it as their home address.

Up to six men at a time live at the apartment, including other al Qaeda operatives, particularly Atta’s partner Marwan al-Shehhi. Atta, Binalshibh and al-Shehhi (together with a fourth of the “Hamburg Group,” Ziad Jarrah) travel to Afghanistan together to participate in jihad and are recruited for the plane’s operation. Binalshibh would relocate to Berlin after this and become a middle-man to the pilot hijackers in the United States, unable to obtain an American visa.

Marientstrasse would become famous later for the Islamic activity going on under the noses of German authorities. Many of its residents would later be arrested.

24 September 1999

Posted on by William Arkin

 

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.

23 September 1995

Posted on by William Arkin
Ramzi Binalshibh

 

Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the original “Hamburg four,” and the only one of four to be denied a visa for the United States, first arrives in Germany with a plea for political asylum, claiming illegal detention and torture in his native Sudan.

He is granted asylum in Germany, but in fact, Binalshibh was born in Yemen. That is the reason for his ultimately being denied a visa to the U.S. The poorer Yemenis, in contrast with Saudis and Gulf state nationals, were generally thought to be seeking to come to the United States to illegally emigrate. Denied a visa, from his German base Binalshibh would become the communications link between Mohammed Atta (the leader of the hijackers in the United States) and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the mastermind of the plot, located in Pakistan). Thus the German location would prove fortuitous, for communications between the U.S. and Germany were not routinely monitored and the German location helped the hijackers evade detection. Binalshibh would ultimately leave Germany on September 5, just days before the 9/11 attacks, traveling to Afghanistan before being captured a year later.

On September 11, 2002, two al Qaeda suspects were killed and five were captured after Pakistani police stormed an apartment in Karachi. Binalshibh is subsequently transported to “black sites” and tortured, eventually moved to Guantanamo Bay, where he is held today.