Hamburg cell

The Hamburg cell (German: Hamburger Zelle; Arabic: خلية هامبورغ, Khalia Hamburh) were a clandestine cell system of eleven Islamist terrorists living in Hamburg, Germany, in the late 1990s. In 1999, they traveled to Afghanistan to meet with leaders of the militant organization al-Qaeda, and then returned to Hamburg to work on al-Qaeda's plan for terrorist attacks against the United States. This led to the September 11 attacks in 2001, in which four American airliners were hijacked in an attempt to crash them into important landmarks in the country.

Germany, the U.S., and the United Nations collectively consider eleven people to have been members. Three of them—Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah—were the hijacker-pilots of American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, and United Airlines Flight 93, respectively. Around 2003, Ramzi bin al-Shibh stated that only he and those three men were members. However, authorities also list Abdelghani Mzoudi, Mamoun Darkazanli, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, Mounir el-Motassadeq, Naamen Meziche, Said Bahaji, and Zakariya Essabar.

The general plan for the attacks was developed by al-Qaeda officials Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the cell worked out its details in Atta's apartment. Out of the members who were still alive after September 11, three of them—Bahaji, Essabar, and Meziche—likely escaped to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The rest were arrested for their involvement; most were imprisoned, while Mzoudi was acquitted, and bin al-Shibh and Darkazanli never faced full trials.

In the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, 19 men who were members of the Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda hijacked four American commercial flights in an attempt to crash them into important landmarks in the country.^[1][2] American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were crashed into 1 and 2 World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City. Both towers soon collapsed as a result of the damage. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon near Washington D.C.^[2] United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania; the hijackers had redirected it towards Washington D.C., likely aiming for the U.S. Capitol Building, but the surviving passengers and crew revolted against the hijackers mid-flight, likely causing the hijackers to send the plane downwards.^[2][3] 2,977 people were killed in the attacks.^[2] Osama bin Laden, a fugitive of Saudi Arabia, founded al-Qaeda.^[2][4] The organization funded the attacks as revenge against the United States for the country's military presence in the Middle East, involvement in the Gulf War (1990-1991), and support of Israel.^[4]

While bin Laden is considered the main perpetrator of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, leader of al-Qaeda's propaganda operations from 1999 to 2001, was the principal designer of the attack plan, and after 2002, told journalists and investigators how he worked on it.^[2][4][5] In 1993, a group of al-Qaeda members led by his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, set off a large bomb underneath the World Trade Center.^[6][7] Yousef was testing part of a plan his uncle had been developing, later known as the Bojinka plot; eleven planes flying from Asia to the U.S. would be hijacked over the Pacific, and then used to attack American targets, as well as assassinate Pope John Paul II. It never came to fruition, but it evolved into the plan for the September 11 attacks.^[8][9] In 1994, Yousef bombed Philippine Airlines Flight 434; for this and the WTC bombing, he was arrested in 1995.^[6] Mohammed continued with his plan. In 1996, he went to bin Laden, who was living in Afghanistan; at the time, al-Qaeda was allowed by the Taliban, Afghanistan's Islamic fundamentalist government, to use the country as its base of operations.^[9][10] Mohammed detailed a plan to fly ten planes into American buildings. bin Laden said it was too elaborate, and the pair started redesigning the plan in spring 1999.^[9][11]

In 1992, Mohamed Atta, an architect from Egypt, moved to Hamburg, Germany, to study urban planning at university.^[12][13] Four years later, he began attending the local al-Quds Mosque, which had Muslim visitors from around the world.^[12] There, many young men were Islamists, and they enforced Islamic morality in the behavior of the other worshipers.^[11] Atta was radicalized towards Islamism, either by meeting those men, or being directly contacted by an agent of bin Laden.^[14] He subsequently became the ringleader of the Hamburg cell, a clandestine cell system of Islamic extremist terrorists who lived in the city in 1998 and 1999. Likely, the cell were likely planning their own jihadist activities when they met al-Qaeda's leadership, and then joined al-Qaeda in late 1999 to work on the details of the redesigned hijacking plan.^[12][14][15]

Cell member Ramzi bin al-Shibh was born in Pakistan, raised in Kuwait, and was a Yemeni national at the time he joined.^[14] He maintained his Germany residency status by continuously enrolling into college classes that he rarely showed up to.^[11] Around 2003, he stated that the only members were him, Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah. The latter three hijacked separate planes in the attacks—Flights 11, 175, and 93, respectively—and were the ones in their respective hijacker groups who flew the planes after the cockpits were taken over.^[14][16] Hani Hanjour, the hijacker-pilot of Flight 77, was not in the cell.^[17] Despite bin al-Shibh's statement, authorities from Germany, the U.S., and the United Nations describe seven other men as members.^[14][16][18] One was Mamoun Darkazanli, who ran the al-Quds mosque. At some point before the September 11 attacks, the U.S. became aware that Darkazanli was associated with al-Qaeda, and asked German authorities to stop him. However, Germany had no laws at the time prohibiting being part of a foreign terrorist organization, so they did not.^[14]

Besides Darkazanli, the first members Atta met at the mosque were al-Shehhi, Jarrah, Mounir el-Motassadeq, and Said Bahaji.^{[19][14][20][11]} al-Shehhi was a devoted Muslim from the United Arab Emirates, and was studying in Hamburg via a scholarship program ran by the Emirati military.^[14] Jarrah was from a Lebanese Muslim family, but was mostly secular when he arrived to study in the city.^[14][11] He started observing Islamic rules after visiting the mosque, and became radicalized like Atta.^[14][12][11] Member Zakariya Essabar, who moved from Morocco for education, was also radicalized there.^[14][21] el-Motassadeq and Bahaji were from that same country.^[14][22][16] The latter had served five months in the German Army until he was discharged for medical reasons.^[14] The fourth Moroccan member was Abdelghani Mzoudi, el-Motassadeq's friend.^[22][16] Naamen Meziche was born in Algeria, and was a French national when he joined the cell. He was married to the daughter of an Islamic extremist preacher named Mohammed El Fazazi.^[18][23]

When Bahaji joined, German authorities were investigating him for associating with an Islamic extremist from Syria named Mohammed Haydar Zammar. The investigation was closed, as they could not find evidence of the pair committing crimes.^[14][24] Bahaji's Islamist and jihadist beliefs came from Zammar.^[24] The latter was a local cleric and auto mechanic, who had been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, as well as a jihadist fighter in the Bosnian War (1992-1995) and an unspecified war in Afghanistan. He was still interested in violent jihad when he joined.^[11][18][15] Similar to Bahaji, he was being surveilled by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which he was unaware of. The BKA and CIA's efforts were not thorough enough to catch the cell planning the September 11 attacks.^[11] Authorities have described both men as the singular person who brought the cell's members together.^[11][25]

Over a few months in 1999, the cell members watched footage of jihadists fighting in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya. The latter region was internationally recognized as a republic of Russia, but was populated by separatist groups. A military of the unrecognized breakaway state named the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, as well as Islamist Chechen militants, rebelled against Russia during the Second Chechen War (1999-2009). Watching the Islamists fight, the members became motivated to join them in-person.^{[11][15][26][27]} Almost all the members stopped contacting their families.^[14] No women were present at Bahaji's wedding at the al-Quds Mosque in October 1999, not even his bride. Atta, al-Shehhi, bin al-Shibh, and Jarrah were in attendance. bin al-Shibh was the event's principal speaker, and he urged the other guests to fight against Jews.^[28][29]

After September 11, German and American authorities had contradictory findings over when the Hamburg cell decided to attack the U.S. In late 1999, after the cell decided to fight in Chechnya, they boarded a train going east. According to the U.S.' 9/11 Commission, apparently by chance, an al-Qaeda member named Khalid al-Masri was onboard the train at the same time, and he met the cell, then convinced them to join his organization; beforehand, they apparently had no intentions of attacking the U.S. They then traveled to Afghanistan and met bin Laden. The commission's findings contrasted Germany's understanding that the cell came up with the plan independently of al-Qaeda. Reacting to the U.S.' findings, German intelligence official Manfred Murck said it helped him understand why Germany's pre-September 11 surveillance of domestic Islamic extremists did not catch the plan; it was not made in Germany. The U.S. claimed no connection could be made between the cell and al-Qaeda beforehand, and that their conclusion was built off testimony bin al-Shibh gave after he was captured.^[15]

The U.S. found that Mohamedou Ould Slahi also played a role in connecting the groups. Slahi was a Mauritanian who ran an import-export business in Duisburg, Germany. His cousin knew bin Laden. At the time, German and American intelligence knew of him, and that he was with al-Qaeda, but not that he was living in Germany. On the train, al-Masri supposedly asked the cell to visit him. After traveling to Duisburg, Slahi warned them it was hard to cross the border into Chechnya. He said they should instead go to Pakistan, to rendezvous with al-Qaeda operatives who could get them across the country's border with Afghanistan. The members would then meet bin Laden and the other higher-ups in al-Qaeda.^[11][15]

Shortly after the meeting with Slahi, Atta, al-Shehhi, bin al-Shibh, and Jarrah entered Afghanistan separately to meet with the organization's leadership. The four were trained to be jihadist terrorists, and briefed on the plan to hijack American airliners.^[11][15] Some of the members eventually met up in Afghanistan. Raw footage with the timestamp of January 8, 2000, shows multiple people watching bin Laden speak at al-Qaeda's Tarnak Farms training base in the country. They include Atta, bin al-Shibh, Jarrah, al-Qaeda officers Abu Faraj al-Libbi and Saif al Adel, and Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam, the latter of whom was wanted for participating in al-Qaeda's 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa. Similar footage timestamped January 18, shows Atta and Jarrah stating their last wills and testaments, and discussing unspecified sheets of paper on the floor next to them. The former recording was likely to be used in an official al-Qaeda propaganda video. Both recordings were released in 2006; subsequent attempts by authorities to lip read Atta and Jarrah's discussion of the papers were futile.^[30] The cell members who visited Afghanistan eventually returned to Hamburg.^[11][15]

At different times between November 1998 and July 1999, Bahaji, bin al-Shibh, and Essabar lived with Atta in his apartment on Marien Street in Hamburg. There, the cell worked out the details of al-Qaeda's hijacking plan.^[19][14][31] Investigators disagree if Jarrah ever lived there.^[31][32] Notably, Jarrah was the only member who stayed in contact with family during the attacks' planning stage. His family tried to influence him away from Islamism, and he may have even had doubts about participating in the hijackings. In mid-2001, while living in the U.S., he briefly left his role as a presumptive hijacker, either once or twice.^[11][14]

bin al-Shibh had been selected by al-Qaeda's higher-ups to be a hijacker, and he made a video where he proclaimed he was going to be a martyr.^[14] However, he was unable to get an American travel visa, so he instead acted as a liaison between the cell and al-Qaeda's leadership, telling the members what their targets were, and notifying them of wire transfers from the higher-ups.^[19][14] el-Motassadeq helped with logistics, and paid some members' bills, such as the students' tuitions.^[33][34] He also had power of attorney over al-Shehhi's bank account, and signed Atta's will.^[16] Bahaji was the cell's computer expert, and Essabar helped them tamper with and forge passports.^[14] In January 2000, to hide their time in Afghanistan from security officials at international airports, Atta and al-Shehhi reported their passports as stolen and received blank duplicates; Jarrah did the same in February.^[12]

Atta, al-Shehhi, and Jarrah left Germany for the U.S. and enrolled at Huffman Aviation, a flight school in Venice, Florida.^[14] Bin al-Shibh helped the three men find the school, and sent them $120,000 USD for living expenses in America, including going to the school.^[14] el-Motassadeq kept paying the rent on their homes in Germany to make it look like they planned to come back.^[33][34] Essabar left Hamburg for Pakistan on August 30, 2001, so he could cross the Afghanistan border to tell the leaders of al-Qaeda the date of the attacks.^[14][15] Bahaji, on September 3, and bin al-Shibh but possibly stayed in Pakistan.^[15][35]

On September 11, 2001, Atta, al-Shehhi, and Jarrah died as a result of their respective hijackings.^[14] Soon after, in response to the attacks, the U.S. opened the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba to house confirmed and suspected Islamic extremist militants and terrorists. Many of its inmates over the following years alleged that the U.S. tortured them at the camp.^[36][37] Slahi was arrested in West Africa shortly after the attacks, then disappeared, before being captured by the U.S. and sent to Guantanamo in 2002.^[15] Also in 2002, Khalid Shiekh Mohammed was interviewed by the media while in hiding in Pakistan, and he admitted to planning the attacks. He was captured by Pakistan in March 2003, and given to the U.S., who kept him in its custody.^[8][5][16]

In January 2002, the U.S. announced that bin al-Shibh had connections to al-Qaeda.^[38] In September, he was captured by Pakistan, and then given to the U.S.^[39] Through his lawyer, he later put out the aforementioned statement that the Hamburg cell's only members were him, Atta, al-Shehhi, and Jarrah; this is mentioned in a CBSNews.com article timestamped 2002, but the article was likely written in 2004, and suggests bin al-Shibh's statement was released in August 2003.^[16] The CIA sent bin al-Sihbh to Guantanamo in 2006.^[14] Two years later, he was charged at Guantanamo's court for being involved in the cell. He planned to defend himself in a subsequent trial, despite having admitted to being a member. The trial started in 2012, and continued until 2023, when his lawyers successfully argued he was not mentally able to defend himself due to psychological strain from years of torture in CIA custody and at Guantanamo.^[40][37]

el-Motassadeq was arrested in Germany two months after September 11, and charged him with being involved in the cell.^[20][16] Around that time, his friend Mzoudi was also arrested there.^[16] Sometime after the U.S. had captured both bin al-Shibh and Khalid Shiekh Mohammed, German prosecutors requested the U.S. that both of them be made to testify in el-Motassadeq's trial. The U.S. refused.^[8][16] Still, he was found guilty, and later in 2003, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. However, his conviction was then thrown out, when a court determined his trial should have included the aforementioned testimonies. el-Motassadeq was released from prison, then arrested again, and a new trial began.^[16] The U.S. similarly did not allow bin al-Shibh and Mohammed to testify in Mzoudi's trial. He was acquitted in 2004, as without the testimonies, prosecutors did not have a strong enough case against him. He was deported to Morocco in 2005.^[16][41] el-Motassadeq was convicted in 2006, and was imprisoned from 2007 to 2018.^[42][43][20] Alongside Zacarias Moussaoui, he was the only person to be imprisoned for their role in the Upon his release, he was also deported to Morocco.^[20]

The following is a list of all cell members described by officials in Germany, the U.S. and the U.N., detailing what happened to them during or after the attacks, and what consensus says about their status as a member:

The film Hamburg Cell is a docudrama on the planning and execution of the attacks. A co-production between Channel 4 in the UK and CBC in Canada, it was shown in the UK during September 2004, amid criticism that this was too close to the anniversary of the attack.

• Planning of the September 11 attacks
• Brussels cell