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.
Edna Adan Ismail
Edna Adan was born in Hargeisa, British Somaliland on September 8, 1937, the daughter of a prominent Somali medical doctor. She was one of five children born to her mother, but two died at the time of delivery. At the time girls weren't educated in Somaliland, but her father hired a tutor for some local boys and she learned to read and write with them. She later went to a school in Djibouti where her aunt was a teacher. When she was eight years old, she underwent FGM. It was arranged by her mother and grandmother when her father was on a business trip; when he returned he was furious.