Author: Bob Woodward, Washington
Post Staff Writer
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: September 28, 2001
Mohamed Atta, one of the key organizers
among the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, left behind
a five-page handwritten document in Arabic that includes Islamic prayers,
instructions for a last night of life and practical reminders to bring
"knives, your will, IDs, your passport" and, finally, "to make sure that
nobody is following you."
FBI investigators, who found the
writings in Atta's luggage, which did not make it onto his flight, are
not sure of the author's identity -- whether it was Atta, another hijacker
or someone else.
The document is a cross between
a chilling spiritual exhortation aimed at the hijackers and an operational
mission checklist. With the hijackers all dead, the pages may turn out
to provide the most vivid and penetrating glimpse into their mental states
and final hours before they embarked on the deadliest act of terrorism
in U.S. history.
The haunting writings urge the hijackers
to crave death and "be optimistic." At the same time, the document starkly
addresses fear on the eve of their suicide mission.
"Everybody hates death, fears death,"
according to a translation of highlights of the document obtained by The
Washington Post. "But only those, the believers who know the life after
death and the reward after death, would be the ones who will be seeking
death."
This appears in a section of the
document beneath the words, "The last night."
That section begins, "Remind yourself
that in this night you will face many challenges. But you have to face
them and understand it 100 percent. . . . Obey God, his messenger, and
don't fight among yourself where you become weak, and stand fast, God will
stand with those who stood fast."
The translated version of the document
instructs the hijackers to steel their will with prayer before embarking
on their mission.
"You should pray, you should fast.
You should ask God for guidance, you should ask God for help. . . . Continue
to pray throughout this night. Continue to recite the Koran."
It continues: "Purify your heart
and clean it from all earthly matters. The time of fun and waste has gone.
The time of judgment has arrived. Hence we need to utilize those few hours
to ask God for forgiveness. You have to be convinced that those few hours
that are left you in your life are very few. From there you will begin
to live the happy life, the infinite paradise. Be optimistic. The prophet
was always optimistic."
The document offers eerie practical
advice for the hijackers:
"Check all of your items -- your
bag, your clothes, knives, your will, your IDs, your passport, all your
papers. Check your safety before you leave. . . . Make sure that nobody
is following you."
Interwoven throughout is spiritual
guidance on purifying one's mental and physical state. The document says,
"Make sure that you are clean, your clothes are clean, including your shoes."
A recurring theme is the promise
of eternal life.
"Keep a very open mind, keep a very
open heart of what you are to face," the document says. "You will be entering
paradise. You will be entering the happiest life, everlasting life."
Atta, 33, and Abdulaziz Alomari
spent the night of Sept. 10 in Room 232 of the South Portland Comfort Inn
in Portland, Maine. Early Sept. 11, they boarded a flight from Portland
to Boston's Logan Airport, where they connected to American Airlines Flight
11, the plane that was commandeered and flown into the north tower of the
World Trade Center.
Atta's luggage did not make it onto
Flight 11. The FBI found another copy of essentially the same document
in the wreckage of United Flight 93, a government source said. Flight 93
was also hijacked and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. The multiple
copies suggest the document was shared among at least some of the hijackers.
After the attacks, several published
reports stated that Atta had left a "suicide note," which is what the FBI
initially called it in a document sent to police investigators in Europe.
Other reports called it a will written by Atta, an Egyptian who joined
radical Islamic circles while studying urban planning in Germany.
Yesterday, the Dallas Morning News
quoted federal officials as saying that a copy of an Arabic-language prayer
guide had been found in the wreckage of Flight 93.
The first four pages of the document
are handwritten on large paper and recite some basic Islamic history about
the prophet fighting infidels with 100 men against 1,000. They also include
prayers such as, "I pray to you God to forgive me from all my sins, to
allow me to glorify you in every possible way."
The fifth and last page is on standard
stenographer paper that apparently had been ripped from a pad and is headed,
"When you enter the plane":
It includes a series of prayers
or exhortations. "Oh, God, open all doors for me. Oh God who answers prayers
and answers those who ask you, I am asking you for your help. I am asking
you for forgiveness. I am asking you to lighten my way. I am asking you
to lift the burden I feel.
"Oh God, you who open all doors,
please open all doors for me, open all venues for me, open all avenues
for me."
The author doodled on the paper,
drawing a small, arrowhead-like sword. Two circles entwine the shaft, which
also has serpentine swirls drawn onto it. The doodle also resembles a key.
The word "ROOM" is written vertically
in large double- block letters at the end.
The document continues: "God, I
trust in you. God, I lay myself in your hands."
It closes, "There is no God but
God, I being a sinner. We are of God, and to God we return."
The document, several scholars of
Islam said, draws on traditional Islamic prayers and alludes to Koranic
verses. It begins with the universal Islamic benediction recalling God's
mercy and compassion. And the last two paragraphs repeat the basic Muslim
belief that "there is no God but God."
However, some noted that words like
"100 percent" and "optimistic" are modern vocabulary not found in ancient
prayers.
"Except for the section that talks
about going into a plane and the knives, virtually everything else you
could find in some medieval devotional manuals," said John Voll of Georgetown
University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
It seems to have been written, Voll
added, "by a person who lives in a devotional environment that involves
a significant amount of memorized material. . . . It is embedded in a broad
Islamic devotional discourse."
Other scholars noted the document's
use of Islamic language to clothe a practical call to action.
"The jargon is authentic Islamic
jargon," said Imad ad Dean Ahmad, president of the Bethesda-based Minaret
of Freedom Institute. "It's obviously phrased to make it sound like it's
part of a message to people going on a
mission from which they will not
return."
Richard C. Martin, professor of
Islamic studies at Emory University, said the document appears to refer
to "the purification that martyrdom represents" before it gets to "the
quotidian matters of entering the airplane and gives final instructions."
Martin added, "This is a kind of
spiritual preparation as I read it, or so it sounds."
However, two scholars said they
found "incongruous" the opening line that refers to praying "in the name
of God, of myself and my family . . ." because Muslims do not pray in their
name or their families' names.
Jonathan Brockopp, assistant professor
of Islamic studies at Bard College, noted another incongruity in the statement
about seeking death.
In mainstream Muslim tradition,
he said, "there is an important distinction between suicide and martyrdom
in that martyrs don't seek death. A martyr seeks to glorify God and be
God's instrument . . . and is not necessarily seeking death."
The idea "of not seeking death,"
Brockopp added, "is tremendously important in Muslim tradition."
However, he noted, Islamic extremists
have recently arrived at their own interpretations of these early Muslim
teachings, and the document's author appears to follow the extremist view.
Finally, Brockopp said he found
certain phrases like "lighten my way . . . lift the burden" typical of
self- exhortations made by "a person who joins a charismatic community
or cult" and then tries "to do something beyond impossibility."
(Staff writer Caryle Murphy and
staff researcher Jeff Himmelman contributed to this report.)
