Ziad Jarrah became involved in the planning of the September 11 attacks while attending Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in the late 1990s, meeting Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, forming what is known as the Hamburg cell.
37 Facts About Ziad Jarrah
2.
Ziad Jarrah was recruited by Osama bin Laden for the attacks in 1999.
3.
Ziad Jarrah was reportedly the only hijacker who had any significant apprehensions about carrying out the attacks.
4.
Ziad Jarrah trained at Huffman Aviation together with Atta and Al-Shehhi with their flight instructor Rudi Dekkersfrom June 2000 to January 2001, after relocating to Florida from New Jersey.
5.
On September 7,2001, Ziad Jarrah flew from Fort Lauderdale to Newark.
6.
Ziad Jarrah was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to a wealthy family.
7.
Ziad Jarrah was brought up in the Muslim quarter of the city, Tarik Jdideh, and received his primary and secondary education from schools in that area.
8.
Ziad Jarrah's parents were nominally Sunni Muslim, although they lived a secular lifestyle.
9.
From 1995 to 1996, while Ziad Jarrah was still living in Yemen, according to his family, somebody of the same name rented an apartment in Brooklyn, New York.
10.
Ziad Jarrah met Aysel Sengun, a German-born woman of Turkish ancestry studying dentistry, and the two became good friends.
11.
In September 1997, Ziad Jarrah left Greifswald and instead began studying aerospace engineering at the Fachhochschule in Hamburg, while working at a Volkswagen paint shop in nearby Wolfsburg.
12.
Ziad Jarrah did not live with any of the others and can be confirmed to have met with any of them in Hamburg only on a single occasion: that of Said Bahaji's wedding at the al-Quds Mosque in October 1999.
13.
Not long after this, Ziad Jarrah shaved his beard and began to act in a more secular way, according to Sengun.
14.
Ziad Jarrah dropped out of the Fachhochschule and began looking at flight schools.
15.
Ziad Jarrah claimed that this was to fulfill his childhood dream of being a pilot.
16.
Ziad Jarrah apparently entered the United States on seven separate occasions, more than any other hijacker.
17.
Ziad Jarrah then traveled to Florida together with al-Shehhi and Atta, where the three men enrolled full-time at Huffman Aviation, in Venice.
18.
Ziad Jarrah did not apply for a change in his status, from a tourist visa to a student visa, thus violating his immigration status.
19.
Ziad Jarrah was enrolled in flight school for six months, from June 2000 to January 15,2001.
20.
Ziad Jarrah was unique among the hijackers in that he did not live with any other hijackers, but rather lived with a German student named Thorsten Biermann.
21.
Biermann did not observe Ziad Jarrah acting particularly religiously or overtly politically.
22.
Ziad Jarrah occasionally flew back to Germany to visit Aysel Sengun, his Turkish-German girlfriend, and called or e-mailed her nearly every day.
23.
Ziad Jarrah had obtained his license to fly small aircraft in August 2000, and began training to fly large jets later that year.
24.
Ziad Jarrah flew to Beirut to visit his family, and then to Germany to visit his girlfriend, Sengun.
25.
Ziad Jarrah brought her back to the United States for a ten-day visit, and she even attended a flight school session with him.
26.
Ziad Jarrah's behavior was markedly different from the other hijackers, who broke off all familial and romantic relations.
27.
The Florida flight school where Ziad Jarrah had been studying said he was in school there until January 15,2001.
28.
Ziad Jarrah rented a new apartment in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea after both men gave the landlord photocopies of their German passports, which he later turned over to the FBI.
29.
Later, he met with bin al-Shibh who convinced Ziad Jarrah to go through with the operation.
30.
Ziad Jarrah phoned his parents later that day, mentioning that he had received the money order they had sent five days earlier.
31.
On September 11,2001, Ziad Jarrah, Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Nami and Ahmed al-Haznawi boarded United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark International Airport at gate A17 without incident, and sat in first-class seats near the cockpit.
32.
Ziad Jarrah ceased the violent maneuvers at 10:01:00 and recited the takbir several times.
33.
However, the October 2006 emergence of a video shot on January 18,2000, showing Ziad Jarrah recording his will alongside Mohamed Atta has cast heavy doubt on such claims.
34.
Personnel at the flight school Ziad Jarrah attended described him as "a normal person".
35.
Ziad Jarrah called his family two days, and his girlfriend Aysel Sengun three hours, before boarding United Airlines Flight 93; Sengun described the conversation as "pleasant" and "normal".
36.
Ziad Jarrah claimed that he never mentioned any names of the other hijackers.
37.
On October 23,2001, John Ashcroft claimed that Ziad Jarrah had shared a Hamburg apartment with Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, though German authorities that same day told the Los Angeles Times that they had no evidence that any of Ziad Jarrah's three apartments in Hamburg had been connected with the other hijackers.