The Hamburg cell (; , ) was a network of Islamist extremist activists based in Hamburg, Germany, during the second half of the 1990s. Its members had come to Hamburg to pursue higher education in engineering or related fields. This cell played a central role in the operational planning of the September 11 attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States. Three of the pilots of the four hijacked planes involved in these coordinated attacks—Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah—were members of this cell. Their source of motivation was their belief that they would be recognized as martyrs after their deaths.
In 1999, the cell left Hamburg to join the Chechen jihadists fighting Russia in the Second Chechen War, but redirected to Afghanistan to meet al-Qaeda's leadership. They then worked on the hijacking plan at a Hamburg apartment owned by the cell's ringleader, Mohamed Atta. Twelve men were members: Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah—who died as the hijacker-pilots of American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, and United Airlines Flight 93, respectively—plus Abdelghani Mzoudi, Ahmed Taleb, Mamoun Darkazanli, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, Mounir el-Motassadeq, Naamen Meziche, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Said Bahaji, and Zakariya Essabar.
As the cell dissolved and 9/11 was carried out, four members disappeared in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while the others were captured or arrested in various countries. Most were imprisoned, while Mzoudi was acquitted, and bin al-Shibh and Darkazanli never faced full trials. The U.S. accused Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian businessman, of helping the cell visit al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. He was arrested, sent to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and tortured by camp officials. After 14 years, he was freed when a court found him to be innocent. Bin al-Shibh, who currently remains at Guantanamo Bay, was also tortured there and in various CIA Black Sites in Europe and Asia.
Background
In the 11 September 2001 attacks against the United States, 19 members of the Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda hijacked four American commercial flights in an attempt to crash them into national landmarks. American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were crashed into 1 and 2 World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City. Both towers soon collapsed as a result. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in Pennsylvania; the hijackers had redirected the plane towards Washington, D.C., but then the other passengers and crew fought the hijackers, causing the crash. Al-Qaeda, founded by Osama bin Laden, organized the attacks.
While bin Laden is considered the main perpetrator of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the principal designer of the attack plan. Mohammed has detailed the plot to journalists and investigators since 2002. In the early 1990s, Mohammed was involved in the Bojinka plot: al-Qaeda's plan for eleven planes, flying from Asia to the U.S., to be bombed over the Pacific Ocean. Pope John Paul II would concurrently be assassinated. The plot was foiled, but it evolved into the plan for 9/11. In 1996, Mohammed went to bin Laden, who was living in Afghanistan, where the Taliban government allowed al-Qaeda to operate. Mohammed detailed a plan to fly ten planes into American buildings. Bin Laden said it was too elaborate, and it was redesigned around 1999.
History
Start of the Hamburg cell In 1992, Mohamed Atta, an architect from Egypt, moved to Hamburg, Germany, to study urban planning at university there. Four years later, he began attending the local al-Quds Mosque, which had Muslim visitors from around the world. There, many young men were Islamists, and they enforced Islamic morality in the behavior of the other worshipers. Atta was radicalized towards Islamism, either by meeting those men, or being directly contacted by an agent of bin Laden. He subsequently became the ringleader of the Hamburg cell, a clandestine cell system of Islamic extremist terrorists who lived in the city in 1998 and 1999. Likely, they were planning their own jihadist activities when they met al-Qaeda's leadership, and then joined al-Qaeda in late 1999 to work on the details of the redesigned hijacking plan.
Cell member Ramzi bin al-Shibh was from Yemen. He maintained his Germany residency status by continuously enrolling into college classes that he rarely showed up to. Around 2003, in a statement released by his lawyer, bin al-Shibh listed himself, Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah as members. The latter three hijacked separate planes on 9/11—Flights 11, 175, and 93, respectively—and were those who in their respective hijacker groups who flew the planes after the cockpits were taken over. Hani Hanjour, the hijacker-pilot of Flight 77, was not in the cell. Besides those whom bin al-Shibh listed, investigators have determined other men to be members.
Some of the first members Atta reportedly met at the mosque were al-Shehhi, Jarrah, Mounir el-Motassadeq, and Said Bahaji. Al-Shehhi was a devoted Muslim from the United Arab Emirates, and was studying in Hamburg via a scholarship program ran by the Emirati military. Jarrah was from a Lebanese Muslim family, but was mostly secular when he arrived to study in the city. He started observing Islamic rules after visiting the mosque. El-Motassadeq and Bahaji were from Morocco. The latter had served five months in the German Army until he was discharged for medical reasons.
Mamoun Darkazanli, who ran the al-Quds Mosque, was also a member. At some point before 9/11, the U.S. became aware that Darkazanli was associated with al-Qaeda, and asked German authorities to stop him. However, Germany had no laws at the time prohibiting being part of a foreign terrorist organization, so they did not. The two other Moroccan members included Zakariya Essabar, who moved to Germany for education, and was radicalized at the mosque. Abdelghani Mzoudi was el-Motassadeq's friend. There were two members from Algeria. Naamen Meziche was born in Algeria, and was a French national when he joined the cell. He was married to the daughter of an Islamic extremist preacher named Mohammed El Fazazi. Little is confirmed about member Ahmed Taleb before he joined, other than his Algerian origin. He was 48 in August 2001—older than the other members. He may have been in contact with Abu Zubaydah, whose membership of Al-Qaeda is disputed.
When Bahaji joined, German authorities were investigating him for associating with an Islamic extremist from Syria named Mohammed Haydar Zammar. The investigation was closed, as they could not find evidence of the pair committing crimes. Bahaji's Islamist and jihadist beliefs came from Zammar. The latter was a local cleric and auto mechanic, who had been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, as well as a jihadist fighter in the Bosnian War (1992–1995) and a war in Afghanistan. He was still interested in violent jihad when he joined. Similar to Bahaji, he was being surveilled by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the CIA, which he was unaware of. The BKA and CIA's efforts were not thorough enough to catch the cell planning 9/11. Authorities have described both men as the singular person who brought the cell's members together.
Chechnya plan
Over a few months in 1999, the cell members watched footage of jihadists fighting in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya. The latter region was internationally recognized as a republic of Russia, but was populated by separatist groups. A military of the unrecognized breakaway state named the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, as well as Islamist Chechen militants, rebelled against Russia during the Second Chechen War (1999–2009). Watching the Islamists fight, the members became motivated to join them in-person. Almost all the members stopped contacting their families. No women were present at Bahaji's wedding at the al-Quds Mosque in October 1999—not even his bride. Atta, al-Shehhi, bin al-Shibh, and Jarrah were in attendance. bin al-Shibh was the event's principal speaker, and he urged the other guests to fight against Jews.
Shortly after 9/11, German authorities found that the cell came up with the plan to hijack U.S. planes independently of al-Qaeda, and that they joined a similar plan of al-Qaeda's partway through. This was refuted in 2004 by the U.S. government's 9/11 Commission, who based their conclusion on interrogations of bin al-Shibh after his capture in 2002. The commission claimed that in late 1999, the cell members boarded a train going east—the direction of Chechnya—and by chance, an al-Qaeda member named Khalid al-Masri was on board the train at the same time. He met the cell, then convinced them to join the organization. Beforehand, the cell had supposedly no connection to al-Qaeda, and no intentions of attacking the U.S. German intelligence official Manfred Murck said the findings helped him understand why Germany's pre-9/11 surveillance of domestic Islamic extremists did not catch the plan; it was not made in Hamburg.
Afghanistan visits After meeting al-Masri; Atta, al-Shehhi, bin al-Shibh, and Jarrah entered Afghanistan separately to meet with al-Qaeda's leadership. The four were trained to be jihadist terrorists, and briefed on the plan to hijack American airliners. Some of the members eventually met up in Afghanistan. Raw footage with the timestamp of 8 January shows multiple people watching bin Laden speak at al-Qaeda's Tarnak Farms training base in the country. They include Atta; bin al-Shibh; Jarrah; al-Qaeda officers Abu Faraj al-Libbi and Saif al Adel; and Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam, the latter of whom was wanted for participating in al-Qaeda's 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa. Similar footage timestamped 18 January shows Atta and Jarrah stating their last wills and testaments, and discussing unspecified sheets of paper on the floor next to them. The former recording was likely to be used in an official al-Qaeda propaganda video. Both recordings were released in 2006; subsequent attempts by authorities to lip read Atta and Jarrah's discussion of the papers were futile. The cell members who visited Afghanistan eventually returned to Hamburg.
Planning of the September 11 attacks
At different times between 1998 and 2000, Bahaji, bin al-Shibh, and Essabar lived with Atta in his apartment on Marienstraße (Marien Street) in Hamburg. There, the cell worked out the details of al-Qaeda's hijacking plan. Investigators disagree if Jarrah ever lived there. Notably, Jarrah was the only member who stayed in contact with family during the attacks' planning stage. His family tried to influence him away from Islamism, and he may have even had doubts about participating in the hijackings. In mid-2001, while living in the U.S., he briefly left his role as a presumptive hijacker, either once or twice.
Bin al-Shibh had been selected by al-Qaeda's higher-ups to be a hijacker, and he made a video where he proclaimed he was going to be a martyr. However, he was unable to get an American travel visa, so he instead acted as a liaison between the cell and al-Qaeda's leadership. This involved multiple jobs, including notifying the cell of wire transfers from the higher-ups. El-Motassadeq helped with logistics, and paid some members' bills, such as the students' tuitions. He also had power of attorney over al-Shehhi's bank account, and signed Atta's will. Bahaji was the cell's computer expert, and Essabar helped them tamper with and forge passports.