Mohamed Atta
Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta ( ; ""  ; September 1, 1968 – September 11, 2001) was an Egyptian hijacker and one of the ringleaders of the September 11 attacks in which four United States commercial aircraft were commandeered with the intention of destroying specific civilian targets. He served as the hijacker-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11 and crashed the plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center as part of the coordinated attacks. At 33 years of age, he was the oldest of the 19 hijackers who took part in the attacks.
Mahmoud Reda
Reda was born in Cairo on March 18, 1930. He was the eighth of ten children and his father was the head librarian at Cairo University. His older brother Ali was a dancer and through his influence (and that of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire films), Mahmoud Reda became interested in dance. He originally trained as a gymnast, representing Egypt in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He attended Cairo University where he received a degree in Political Economics. However, his main interest was dance and he joined an Argentinian dance troupe after graduating and toured Europe. While on tour in Paris he resolved to start his own dance troupe back in Egypt, but due to lack of funds he had to work as an accountant for Royal Dutch Shell. He joined the Heliolido Club in Cairo, where he met Anglo-Egyptian baladi dancer Farida Fahmy, who became his dancing partner. After the two performed in the Soviet Union in 1957, they decided to start a folk dancing troupe in Egypt with Ali Reda.