Mohamed Atta
Atta was born in 1968 in a small town in Egypt's Nile Delta. He was 10 years old when he moved with his family to the Abdeen section of Cairo. Atta studied architecture at Cairo University, graduating in 1990, and continued his studies in Germany at the Hamburg University of Technology. In Hamburg, Atta became involved with the al-Quds Mosque, where he met Marwan al-Shehhi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Ziad Jarrah, together forming the Hamburg cell. Atta disappeared from Germany for periods of time, spending some time in Afghanistan, including several months in late 1999 and early 2000 when he met Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders. Atta and the other Hamburg cell members were recruited by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for the "planes operation" in the United States. Atta returned to Hamburg in February 2000, and began inquiring about flight training in the United States.
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.