**Just for For Changleen**
Psssst! Don't tell ANYONE about Osama Bin Laden being a undercover Mosaad operative...
Father of 9/11 ringleader: Attacks were Jewish conspiracy
Jerusalem Post | 9/9/04 | AP
Retired lawyer Mohammed al-Amir Atta has had three years to hone the attacking style he's adopted as a defense against what he maintains are spurious charges his son was the lead September 11 hijacker.
The attacks were a Jewish conspiracy carried out by the Israeli intelligence service, not a plot by Islamic extremists including his son, the elder Atta declared in an interview with The Associated Press. Moreover, he added, the United States deserved the devastating result because of its anti-Arab policies.
Still, Atta is unwilling to answer direct questions about his son, as became apparent when he's asked about a large photograph on his living room wall showing his son relaxed, so unlike the somber passport photo broadcast around the world after September 11, 2001.
"Sons are dear," is all he will say.
Atta no longer claims his son is still alive, even though he once said his son had called him the day after the attack from an undisclosed destination.
The younger Mohammed Atta was named in FBI and congressional reports as the suicide pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center and the leader of the 19 Arabs who carried out the September 11 attacks.
In a videotape months after the attacks, al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden himself described the 33-year-old Atta as being "in charge of the group" that struck America.
Today, the elder Atta and many Arabs place the blame for terrorism on what they say are the conditions that fuel militants' anger, not on the militants themselves. "No nation has done as much evil in the world as America did, and you do not expect God to punish it?" he asked.
"If a Palestinian flies a plane and strikes the White House and kills [US President George W.] Bush, his wife and his daughters, he will go to heaven," Atta said. "So will any Muslim who defends his faith."
Despite his religious rhetoric, Atta smokes and has decorated his apartment with statues of Buddha, actions few devout Muslims would accept.
Gamal Sultan, a former leader of Egypt's militant Islamic Jihad group and editor of the Cairo-based Islamic weekly Al Manar, said September 11 could be attributed to the grievances built up by American backing for Israel and for despotic Arab regimes.
"Arabs and Muslims are angry at America because of its unflinching support to the Zionist entity and to their own dictators," he said, adding the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq launched after September 11 proved that the Americans had not absorbed this lesson.
Other Arab opinion-makers, though, have said it is Arabs and Muslims who need to draw lessons from terrorism.
Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television, urged introspection among Arabs and Muslims after Russian officials said Arabs had joined in last week's school seizure linked to the separatist movement in largely Muslim Chechnya.
"Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture," al-Rashed wrote in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. Muslims, he added, will be unable to repair their image unless "we admit the scandalous facts," rather than offer condemnations or excuses.
As the September 11 anniversary approached, Saudi Arabia's king urged teachers in the kingdom to protect the nation by promoting "tolerant Islamic beliefs." The elder Atta said the anniversary is just another day for him. "If I am still alive I will pray and read the Koran like every day. It is not something special for me," he said.
Egyptian security officials, who keep close tabs on anyone with extremist leanings because of Egypt's experience with terrorism, said they were surprised when they first heard that the younger Atta was involved in the plot.
One official said he discovered in studying Atta's life that when the future terrorist was studying engineering at Cairo University in the late 1980s, he was dating and drinking alcohol, activities devout Muslims avoid. The official said the younger Atta was either brainwashed later by bin Laden, or he pulled off an extraordinary deception.
Abdel Rahim Ali, an Egyptian expert on Islamic militant groups, said the younger Atta was among probably hundreds of operatives developed by al-Qaida years before the September 11 attacks to operate in Europe and the US.
"Bin Laden and Zawahri were looking for young Muslim men who have special qualifications," Ali said, explaining that al-Qaida needed not just men who hated the West, but whose education and upbringing allowed them to fit into the enemy's society.
In Germany where Atta lived and studied at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, people described him as an intelligent man with strong religious beliefs, an indication that he become more religious after joining what later became known as al-Qaida's Hamburg cell. They speak of his preoccupation with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and anger at the US for defending Israel.
The elder Atta refused to discuss his son's background except to insist that he had raised him to be a good Muslim.
"Muslims should not accept injustice and half solutions," he said. "Islam said fight those who fight you."
Psssst! Don't tell ANYONE about Osama Bin Laden being a undercover Mosaad operative...
Father of 9/11 ringleader: Attacks were Jewish conspiracy
Jerusalem Post | 9/9/04 | AP
Retired lawyer Mohammed al-Amir Atta has had three years to hone the attacking style he's adopted as a defense against what he maintains are spurious charges his son was the lead September 11 hijacker.
The attacks were a Jewish conspiracy carried out by the Israeli intelligence service, not a plot by Islamic extremists including his son, the elder Atta declared in an interview with The Associated Press. Moreover, he added, the United States deserved the devastating result because of its anti-Arab policies.
Still, Atta is unwilling to answer direct questions about his son, as became apparent when he's asked about a large photograph on his living room wall showing his son relaxed, so unlike the somber passport photo broadcast around the world after September 11, 2001.
"Sons are dear," is all he will say.
Atta no longer claims his son is still alive, even though he once said his son had called him the day after the attack from an undisclosed destination.
The younger Mohammed Atta was named in FBI and congressional reports as the suicide pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center and the leader of the 19 Arabs who carried out the September 11 attacks.
In a videotape months after the attacks, al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden himself described the 33-year-old Atta as being "in charge of the group" that struck America.
Today, the elder Atta and many Arabs place the blame for terrorism on what they say are the conditions that fuel militants' anger, not on the militants themselves. "No nation has done as much evil in the world as America did, and you do not expect God to punish it?" he asked.
"If a Palestinian flies a plane and strikes the White House and kills [US President George W.] Bush, his wife and his daughters, he will go to heaven," Atta said. "So will any Muslim who defends his faith."
Despite his religious rhetoric, Atta smokes and has decorated his apartment with statues of Buddha, actions few devout Muslims would accept.
Gamal Sultan, a former leader of Egypt's militant Islamic Jihad group and editor of the Cairo-based Islamic weekly Al Manar, said September 11 could be attributed to the grievances built up by American backing for Israel and for despotic Arab regimes.
"Arabs and Muslims are angry at America because of its unflinching support to the Zionist entity and to their own dictators," he said, adding the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq launched after September 11 proved that the Americans had not absorbed this lesson.
Other Arab opinion-makers, though, have said it is Arabs and Muslims who need to draw lessons from terrorism.
Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television, urged introspection among Arabs and Muslims after Russian officials said Arabs had joined in last week's school seizure linked to the separatist movement in largely Muslim Chechnya.
"Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture," al-Rashed wrote in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. Muslims, he added, will be unable to repair their image unless "we admit the scandalous facts," rather than offer condemnations or excuses.
As the September 11 anniversary approached, Saudi Arabia's king urged teachers in the kingdom to protect the nation by promoting "tolerant Islamic beliefs." The elder Atta said the anniversary is just another day for him. "If I am still alive I will pray and read the Koran like every day. It is not something special for me," he said.
Egyptian security officials, who keep close tabs on anyone with extremist leanings because of Egypt's experience with terrorism, said they were surprised when they first heard that the younger Atta was involved in the plot.
One official said he discovered in studying Atta's life that when the future terrorist was studying engineering at Cairo University in the late 1980s, he was dating and drinking alcohol, activities devout Muslims avoid. The official said the younger Atta was either brainwashed later by bin Laden, or he pulled off an extraordinary deception.
Abdel Rahim Ali, an Egyptian expert on Islamic militant groups, said the younger Atta was among probably hundreds of operatives developed by al-Qaida years before the September 11 attacks to operate in Europe and the US.
"Bin Laden and Zawahri were looking for young Muslim men who have special qualifications," Ali said, explaining that al-Qaida needed not just men who hated the West, but whose education and upbringing allowed them to fit into the enemy's society.
In Germany where Atta lived and studied at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, people described him as an intelligent man with strong religious beliefs, an indication that he become more religious after joining what later became known as al-Qaida's Hamburg cell. They speak of his preoccupation with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and anger at the US for defending Israel.
The elder Atta refused to discuss his son's background except to insist that he had raised him to be a good Muslim.
"Muslims should not accept injustice and half solutions," he said. "Islam said fight those who fight you."
