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.
Mohamed Atta
In 1994, Atta's professor, Dittmar Machule, invited him to Aleppo for a three-day archaeological visit. Atta ended up spending several weeks in Aleppo during August 1994, and visited again that December. While in Syria, he met Amal, a young Palestinian woman, who worked there in the planning bureau. Volker Hauth, who was traveling with Atta, described Amal as "attractive and self-confident. She observed the Muslim niceties, taking taxis to and from the office so as not to come into close physical contact with men on the buses. But, she was 'emancipated' and 'challenging'." They appeared to be attracted to one another, but Atta regretfully explained to Hauth that, "she had a quite different orientation and that the emancipation of the young lady did not fit." This was the closest thing to romance for Atta. In mid-1995, Atta spent three months in Cairo with fellow students Volker Hauth and Ralph Bodenstein, on a grant from the Carl Duisberg Society. They looked at the effects of redevelopment in the Islamic Cairo old quarter which the government wanted to develop for tourism. Atta remained in Cairo with his family, after Hauth and Bodenstein returned to Germany.