Series: New Jersey and Terrorism" Perfect Together By Allan P. Duncan Part 3: Another Mohamed El Amir, AKA Mohamed Atta
In Part 2 of this series you had a chance to meet Dr. Magdy Elamir and his brother Mohamed El Amir. According to an intelligence document that Congressman Ben Gilman had been given in 1998 and a copy of which Dateline NBC also had a chance to review, both of the brothers had ties to Osama Bin Laden. (2)
Neither Magdy, nor his brother Mohamed, were ever arrested by US authorities even though Magdy allegedly funneled millions of dollars from a fraudulent HMO to fund "terrorist activities", and Mohamed tried to get false papers to cover up a shipload of weapons during Operation Diamondback.
I had already done a lot of research on Dr. Magdy Elamir but didn't know a lot about his brother so I started searching the internet for references to Mohamed El Amir and was lead to of all people"Mohamed Atta!
I discovered that while Mohamed Atta was a student at Cairo University , and also while he was living in Hamburg , he was known to his close friends and associates as Mohamed El Amir.
ABC in Sydney , Australia produced a documentary on 9-11 titled A Mission to Die For, and reporter Liz Jackson interviewed Mohamed Mokhtar El Rafei, one of Atta's classmates at Cairo University in the 90's:
""Can you tell us your reaction when you first read in the newspaper, or saw the photograph that said the Mohamed that you knew was supposed to be the man who flew the first plane into the World Trade Centre?"
"Well, for the first time I saw his picture in the newspaper, and I read his name, I had a doubt that the Mohamed what I know, because I knew him as Mohamed El-Amir, and for the first time, I said oh, no, no, this is Mohamed Atta. He's not Mohamed El-Amir, but" this is completely close to his face. But for my feelings, I refused " from my inner believes that this is not Mohamed El-Amir. Of course, he is someone similar to him. And afterwards" when the newspaper that Mohamed El-Amir is called Mohamed Atta in America , I was confused really, because this is not Mohamed El-Amir what I knew, while we were in the faculty.""
Further on:
"If I go back 10 years ago, while we were in the faculty of engineering - by the way, Mohamed El-Amir was close to my bench number, because his name is Mohamed, the same as me - and we joined together in so many occasions to do something.-- (20)
In a Telegraph article by Hannah Cleaver, published on September 17, 2001 , I also ran across references to Atta as Mohamed El Amir. Here are some excerpts:
"MOHAMED ATTA had plans for the future. If he had been scheming for years to kill himself and thousands of others in an act of terrorism, he did nothing to betray that intention during his eight-year stay in Germany .
The 33-year-old, who used a different part of his name, El Amir, while in Hamburg, said he wanted to work for charity to improve the poor areas of Cairo, the city he told friends in Germany that was his birthplace and his home, where his family still lived, and where he trained as an architect.
Prof Diettmar Machule said: "Mohamed El Amir was someone who was in no way extreme. He was helpful, upstanding and correct, hard-working, intellectual and devout in his belief. That is something you would notice. But it was not an extreme kind of belief.
"The man in the photograph is the Mohamed El Amir that I knew, but I cannot believe that he would do such a terrible thing," said the friend, a Protestant German.
He added that El Amir seemed to lead a deeply devout and earnest but otherwise unremarkable life during his time in Hamburg .
Marwan Al Shehhi, 23, from the United Arab Emirates, the man thought to have steered the second jet into the World Trade Centre, was registered at the same university and shared El Amir's flat.
But, while El Amir was well-known on campus and was devoted to his studies, Al Shehhi rarely turned up for lectures or seminars. "It seems he was a phantom student," a college spokesman said." (21)
In another story that ran on CTV News, Lorraine Passchier also refers to the El Amir surname and also names Atta's father:
"Throughout his stay in Hamburg , Atta used his family surname of El Amir, one of eight names authorities have traced to him. But as he traveled across the United States and to Europe over the past year, it appears he stuck with the name Atta as he put his suicide mission in motion.
His father, Cairo lawyer Mohammed El Amir, told a news conference that his son was innocent following the suicide hijackings. He called the United States the "root of terrorism" and blamed Israel for the September attacks." (22)
In a Press Release from the FBI on September 27, 2001 , the name Mohammad El Amir is listed as an alias of Atta's.
"4) Mohamed Atta - Possible Egyptian national
-Date of birth used: September 1, 1968
-Possible residence(s): Hollywood , Florida ; Coral Springs , Florida ; Hamburg , Germany
-Believed to be a pilot
-Alias: Mehan Atta; Mohammad El Amir; Muhammad Atta; Mohamed El Sayed; Mohamed Elsayed; Muhammad Muhammad Al Amir Awag Al Sayyid Atta; Muhammad Muhammad Al-Amir Awad Al Sayad" (23)
So now we know that Mohamed Atta was known as Mohamed El Amir to his friends and associates in Cairo and Hamburg and that his fathers name is also Mohamed El Amir. In addition we find that his father is a lawyer in Cairo .
I don't know anything about Egyptian names, so I'm not sure if the name El Amir is as common as Smith or Jones in the US . I do find it very interesting that Atta shares the same surname as Dr. Magdy Elamir and the exact same name as Magdy's brother Mohamed El Amir.
Dateline NBC revealed that Magdy's brother, Mohamed El Amir was an engineer in Cairo , Egypt . We know that Mohamed Atta studied engineering at Cairo University . Is there a connection? Are they related?
The jury's still out on that one.
