Second shock after 9/11:the trail of the assassins leads to Hamburg

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the USA shook the whole world. It quickly turned out that some of the assassins had lived in Hamburg for years - including "death pilot" Mohammed Atta.

by Marc-Oliver Rehrmann

Shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington on September 11, 2001, the state of emergency also broke out for the Hamburg police. That same evening, the first rumor came out that a trail of the assassins was leading to Hamburg. The following day at around 10:20 p.m. it was official:the Hamburg police situation center received a list from the FBI with the names of the suspected assassins from the Hanseatic city. A query in the population register reveals that the suspects are actually registered in Hamburg.

Mohammed Atta:The "death pilot" - a Hamburg student

Also present:Mohammed Atta. On the morning of September 11, the 33-year-old Egyptian piloted the first of four hijacked planes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC). "It then turned out that it was the apartment at Marienstrasse 54 in Harburg in which Mohammed Atta had lived," said the spokesman for the Hamburg police at the time, Reinhard Fallak, later describing the investigation.

Before Atta died in the attack on American Airlines Flight 11 with another 91 people on board and an unknown number of victims at the impact site on the Twin Towers, he studied for several years at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. In 1992 he enrolled there. In the summer of 1999, Atta submitted his diploma thesis on the old town of Aleppo in Syria, which was threatened with demolition (grade:1.7). His German is excellent.

9/11 and the stations of Mohammed Atta

1. September 1968: Atta is born in Egypt.
1986-1990: He is studying in Cairo.
24. July 1992: Atta visits Germany as part of an exchange program.
23. November 1992: He enrolls at the TU Hamburg-Harburg in urban planning.
End of 1997: He is apparently traveling to Afghanistan for the first time to contact Al Qaeda.
1. November 1998: Atta and friends move into the apartment at Marienstraße 54.
29. November 1999: He is on his way to Afghanistan again.
24. February 2000: He starts his return journey to Hamburg.
3. June 2000: He travels to the USA, where he attends a flight school and prepares the attacks.
11. September 2001: Atta steers a plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

The "Terror-WG":Last traces in the bathroom

He has been living in Marienstrasse since November 1, 1998. In a three-room apartment. 58 square meters. Along with Ramzi Binalshibh and Said Bahaji. There the investigators looked around in the night of September 13, 2001. "The problem was that the apartment had already been renovated," said police spokesman Fallack. "But the investigators still found a few signs of use in the sanitary area that could be attributed to the perpetrators." The residents of the "Terror-WG" had already moved out months earlier:Mohammed Atta had long been in the USA at the time the apartment was liquidated.

A total of eight apartments were checked that night on September 13, as Hamburg's then Senator for the Interior, Olaf Scholz, reported the following day. A 200-strong special commission is formed to investigate the "Hamburg terrorist cell". The investigations are supported by officials from the FBI and the US secret service CIA.

TU Harburg is overwhelmed by press inquiries

Journalists travel from all over the world to see where Mohammed Atta and his friends lived and studied. In the two weeks after the attacks, employees of the TU Harburg gave interviews to 150 journalists from 15 countries. An extreme situation. The then university president Christian Nedeß was "shocked that the trail of the crime led to Hamburg". The university calls for donations for the relatives of the victims in the USA. About 3,000 people were killed in the attacks.

Three of the "terrorist pilots" from 9/11 from Hamburg

Three of the four suicide pilots spent the previous years in Hamburg. In addition to Atta, there is 23-year-old Marwan Al-Shehhi. On September 11, he steers a hijacked plane into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. The third in the group:26-year-old Ziad Jarrah. His job is to fly a United Airlines plane (Flight 93) into the Capitol in Washington. It's probably the passengers who prevent this:The plane crashes in a field near Pittsburgh, everyone on board dies.

Zammar:"Atta was one of my best friends"

But how did it come about that a few students from Hamburg played such a disastrous role in the September 11 attacks? A key figure is Mohammed Haydar Zammar. He brought the "Hamburg terror cell" together years earlier. Born in Syria, he came to Germany in 1971 and was naturalized eleven years later. The trained car mechanic from Alsterdorf inspires Atta and his companions in Hamburg for jihad, the fight against "the infidels". Zammar meets her at the Al-Quds Mosque at Steindamm 103 in the St. Georg district.

They were "my best friends" at the time, Zammar says later in retrospect. What is meant are the later "death pilots" Mohammed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah as well as the student Mounir Al-Motassadeq. "I always wanted to do jihad against injustice against Muslims." This is how Zammar describes it in 2018 in an interview with "Spiegel". The war in Bosnia against the Muslims radicalized him.

Mohammed Atta and Co.:The "Hamburg Terror Cell"

Mohammed Atta is considered the leader of the Hamburg terrorists. The Egyptian studied in Hamburg-Harburg from 1992. He piloted the first plane into the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York.

Marwan Al-Shehhi moved from the United Arab Emirates 1999 to Hamburg and studied shipbuilding at the Technical University in Harburg. The 23-year-old steered a plane into the south tower of the WTC.

The Lebanese Ziad Jarrah studied aircraft construction at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences from 1997. He was flying the hijacked plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

The Yemeni Ramzi Binalshibh is considered the chief logistician of the attacks, but was not given an entry visa for the USA. He has been held in the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay since 2002.

Said Bahaji was the main tenant of the apartment at Marienstrasse 54. Eight days before the attacks he fled to Pakistan.

Zakariya Essabar temporarily lived with Atta in the "Terror-WG". He was not granted an entry visa for the USA and probably fled to Pakistan in August 2001.

Mounir Al-Motassadeq belonged to Atta's circle of friends. He also signed Atta's will. In Hamburg he was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Today he lives in Morocco.

Abdelghani Mzoudi, a good friend of the terrorists, was charged in Hamburg but acquitted in 2004. Mzoudi then left for Morocco.

"We didn't want to get lost in this society"

Zammar describes the connecting element of the Hamburg friends as socially motivated:"We didn't want to get lost in this society where everything is allowed:sexuality, indecent dressing. We wanted to help each other as a group, to stay with God, to read the Koran." At that time he reproduced a brochure with Osama bin Laden's call for jihad against America and distributed it in front of the mosque in St. George. "I'm not ashamed of that," said Zammar in "Spiegel". "For me Bin Laden was a very likeable, good person."

From Hamburg to Al-Qaida in Afghanistan

Apparently, Mohammed Atta and three companions from Hamburg seek contact with the Islamist terror network Al-Qaeda of their own accord. At the end of 1999 they set out on their own to an Islamist training camp in Afghanistan to join the "holy war". This trip drew the attention of the al-Qaeda leadership, which is currently planning the attacks in the USA, to the young men. The fact that the three from northern Germany live inconspicuously in the west is ideal from the point of view of the terrorist network. And after his stay in Afghanistan, Atta is apparently determined to carry out the attacks with hijacked passenger planes. People who see him in Hamburg at this time later report of his hatred of Israel and Jews. In the summer of 2000 - more than a year before the attacks - Atta and Co. move to the USA to attend flight schools. There they want to learn how to fly an airplane.

The Moroccan Motassadeq, who has been in Germany since 1993 and has been enrolled in electrical engineering at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg since 1995, will remain in the Hanseatic city. With Atta he had taken part in the Islam-AG on the university campus and was a regular guest in the apartment on Marienstrasse. Now he regulates money and rent matters for the future assassins - and he signs Atta's will. In 2000 he also traveled to an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

Zammar:"I knew absolutely nothing"

In the "Spiegel" interview, Zammar stated that he was not privy to the September 11 attack plans. "They didn't tell me anything. I had hardly had any contact with the three of them in the last two years. I knew absolutely nothing. They probably kept me out so as not to involve me." When he learns that his friends played a key role in the September 11 attacks, he can't believe it at first. "I didn't think they could."

And indeed:German investigators cannot prove that Zammar was involved in or complicit in the terrorist attacks. After years of investigation, the Federal Public Prosecutor dropped a case for supporting a terrorist organization.

Kidnapped, abducted, tortured

Nevertheless, his friendship with the assassins has serious consequences for Zammar. After 9/11 he was arrested in Morocco - probably at the behest of the CIA - and deported to Syria. There, the German citizen has been in Syrian prisons for more than ten years and, according to his own statements, has been repeatedly tortured. In 2013, Zammar was released during the Syrian civil war and joined the "Islamic State". He has been held in a Kurdish secret service prison in Syria since 2018.

One is convicted:Mounir Al-Motassadeq

Worldwide, only one of the group of the assassins of September 11 and their alleged helpers was convicted - and that was in Hamburg. At the beginning of 2007, after years of proceedings, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court sentenced Mounir Al-Motassadeq to 15 years in prison. Charges of aiding and abetting the murder of the 246 passengers on the crashed planes and membership of a terrorist organization. Motassadeq has always denied that he was involved in the September 11 attacks. "I never belonged to that group," he said in court.

Motassadeq:Entry ban until 2064

After serving most of his sentence, Motassadeq was finally deported to his home country of Morocco in October 2018 - at the age of 44. He is not allowed to enter Germany again until his 90th birthday in 2064.

A memorial in front of the US Consulate General

Today a memorial in Hamburg commemorates the victims of the September 11 attacks. Hamburg's First Mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) and US Consul General Darion Akins unveiled plaques in English and German in front of the US Consulate General on the Outer Alster Lake 20 years after the terror attack. "September 11, 2001 changed the world," said Tschentscher in September 2021. By commemorating the victims, Hamburg wanted to show sympathy and solidarity again.