Mohamed Atta
Atta was born on September 1, 1968, in Kafr el-Sheikh, located in Egypt's Nile Delta region. His father, Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta, was a lawyer, educated in both sharia and civil law. His mother, Bouthayna Mohamed Mustapha Sheraqi, came from a wealthy farming and trading family and was also educated. Bouthayna and Mohamed married when she was 14, via an arranged marriage. The family had few relatives on the father's side and kept a distance from Bouthayna's family. In-laws characterized Atta's father as "austere, strict, and private," and neighbors considered the family reclusive. Atta was the only son; he had two older sisters who are both well-educated and successful in their careers — one as a medical doctor and the other as a professor.
Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou
Mohamedou was born in Atar, Mauritania. He studied in Spain at the Lycée Français de Madrid where he obtained his Baccalaureate in Economic and Social Sciences, in France where he received a law degree at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University Paris I, and the United States, where he earned a Bachelor in International Relations at Hunter College in New York and a Master's and a Ph.D. in Political Science at the City University of New York Graduate School. In 1996-1997, he was Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University and in 1998 Research Associate at the Ralph Bunche Institute on the United Nations in New York.