Ziad Jarrah

**Ziad Samir Jarrah** (Arabic: زياد سمير جراح, romanized: *Ziyād Samīr Jarrāḥ*; 11 May 1975 – 11 September 2001) was a Lebanese terrorist hijacker. He was one of the four hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93, which was crashed into a field in a rural area near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, following a passenger revolt, as part of the 11 September attacks.

After a wealthy and secularist upbringing, Jarrah moved to Germany in 1996. He became involved in the planning of the 9/11 attacks while attending Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW) in the late 1990s, meeting Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, forming what is now known as the Hamburg cell. Jarrah was recruited by Osama bin Laden for the attacks in 1999. Unique among the hijackers, he was close to his family and girlfriend. He was reportedly the only hijacker who had any significant apprehensions about carrying out the attacks. His family and friends continue to deny his association with the attacks.

Jarrah arrived in the United States in June 2000. He trained at Huffman Aviation together with Atta and Al-Shehhi with their flight instructor Rudi Dekkers from June 2000 to January 2001, after relocating to Florida from New Jersey. On 7 September 2001, Jarrah flew from Fort Lauderdale to Newark. Four days later, he boarded United Airlines Flight 93, and was believed to have taken over as the pilot of the aircraft along with his team of hijackers, which included Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Nami and Ahmed al-Haznawi, who together made an attempt to crash the plane into either the United States Capitol or the White House, which was thwarted when the passengers revolted against the hijackers.

## Early life and education

Ziad Jarrah was born on 11 May 1975 in Beirut, Lebanon to a wealthy family. He was brought up in a prominent quarter of the city, Tariq al-Jidida, and received his primary and secondary education from schools in that area. His father, Samir Jarrah, worked as a social service inspector for the Lebanese government and his mother taught at an elementary school. His parents were nominally Sunni Muslim, although they lived a secular lifestyle. In his childhood, he had always wanted to fly planes, but his family discouraged this. "I stopped him from being a pilot," his father told the *Wall Street Journal* a week after the attacks. "I only have one son and I was afraid that he would crash."

From 1995 to 1996, while Jarrah was still living in Yemen, according to his family, somebody of the same name rented an apartment in Brooklyn, New York. The landlords claimed it was the same Jarrah as in the FBI photographs.

In the spring of 1996, Jarrah moved to Germany with his cousin, Salim. They were there to take a certificate course in German at the University of Greifswald, which was required of foreigners studying in Germany who do not speak the language. While sharing an apartment with his cousin, he reportedly attended discos and beach parties, and his attendance at the mosque fell off. He met Aysel Şengün, a German-born woman of Turkish ancestry studying dentistry, and the two became good friends. They dated on and off for the remainder of his life and lived together briefly, which vexed his more religious friends.

In September 1997, Jarrah left Greifswald and instead began studying aerospace engineering at the Fachhochschule (University of Applied Sciences) in Hamburg, while working at a Volkswagen paint shop in nearby Wolfsburg. While in Hamburg, he rented an apartment from Rosemarie Canel, who would paint a portrait of him that he would bring back as a gift for his mother that December.

The 9/11 Commission Report states that Jarrah was a member of the Hamburg cell, along with Mohamed Atta and the others. He did not live with any of the others, however, 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.

## Training in Afghanistan

In late 1999, Jarrah, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Said Bahaji, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh decided to travel to Chechnya to fight Russian soldiers in the Second Chechen War. Khalid al-Masri and Mohamedou Ould Slahi convinced them at the last minute to travel instead to Afghanistan to meet with Osama bin Laden and train for terrorist attacks. Jarrah was given the *kunya* (teknonym) *Abū Ṭāriq* ("father of Tariq") likely in honor of Tariq ibn Ziyad, the commander who led the Muslim conquest of Spain.

They were told they were on a highly secret mission and were instructed to return to Germany after the operation and enroll in flight school. In October 1999, Jarrah was filmed at Said Bahaji's wedding with other 9/11 hijackers, including al-Shehhi.

In 2006, a video surfaced showing Jarrah, still bearded, reading his will in January 2000 along with Mohamed Atta. Not long after this, Jarrah shaved his beard and began to act in a more secular way, according to Şengün. Many of the future hijackers attempted to hide their radicalism and blend in with the population. To hide his travels to Afghanistan (which may have concerned security officials at international airports) Jarrah reported his passport stolen in February 2000 and received a blank duplicate, just as hijackers Atta and Shehhi had done the previous month.

Jarrah dropped out of the Fachhochschule and began looking at flight schools. He claimed that this was to fulfill his childhood dream of being a pilot. After looking in several countries, he decided that none of the flight schools in Europe were adequate. On the advice of a childhood friend, he prepared to move to the United States.[*citation needed*]

## 9/11 attacks

Main article: United Airlines Flight 93

At 5:01 AM on 11 September 2001, Jarrah in Newark placed a phone call to United Airlines Flight 175 hijacker pilot Marwan al-Shehhi in Boston; the pair spoke for less than a minute, likely to confirm that the plan for the attacks was ready to proceed. While Jarrah made a similar call to American Airlines Flight 11 hijacker pilot Mohamed Atta, this did not occur between Jarrah and American Airlines Flight 77 hijacker pilot Hani Hanjour. Later that morning, 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. Before boarding, Jarrah called his girlfriend Aysel Şengün from a public telephone at the airport, repeating the words "I love you" over and over. Due to a delay, the plane took off at 8:42, four minutes before American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center. The pilot and crew were notified of the first two hijackings that day, and were told to be on alert. Within minutes, around 9:28 a.m., Flight 93 was hijacked as well. The 9/11 Commission stated that Jarrah was the pilot.

The voice of a pilot was heard by air traffic control telling passengers to remain seated. Jarrah announcing, "Ladies and gentlemen: here the captain. Please sit down, keep remaining seating. We have a bomb on board. So sit." At 9:39 a.m., the pilot announced over the radio, "This is the captain. Would like you all to remain seated. There is a bomb on board and we are going back to the airport, and to have our demands, so please remain quiet."

At least two of the cellphone calls made by passengers indicate that all the hijackers they saw were wearing red bandanas, and indicated that one of the men, believed to be either al-Haznawi or al-Nami, had a box tied around his torso, and claimed there was a bomb inside. Passengers on the plane had learned the fates of the other hijacked planes through telephone calls; some decided to act, fearing their plane, too, would be used as a missile. A passenger uprising foiled the terrorists' plans, but failed to save the plane. Jarrah and the other hijackers were attacked. According to the August 8, 2003, analysis of the plane's cockpit recording by the United States investigators, a group of passengers tried to break into the cockpit. To knock them off balance, Jarrah rolled the plane to the left and right. When this failed, he then pitched the nose forward and back. Jarrah stabilized the plane at 10:00:03. Five seconds later, he asked, "Is that it? Shall we finish it off?" Another hijacker responded, "No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off." The voice recorder recorded the sound of the passengers using the food cart as a battering ram against the cockpit door. Jarrah ceased the violent maneuvers at 10:01:00 and recited the *takbir* several times. He then asked another hijacker, "Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?" The other hijacker responded, "Yes, put it in it, and pull it down." The passengers continued their assault and at 10:02:17, a male passenger said, "Turn it up!" A second later, a hijacker said, "Pull it down! Pull it down!" At 10:02:33, Jarrah made a desperate plea in Arabic, screaming "Hey! Hey! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me!", possibly referring to the plane's yoke. The plane crashed just outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03:11, 125 miles (200 km) from Washington, D.C. All aboard died instantly. The National Transportation Safety Board reported that the flight impacted at 563 mph (906 km/h; 252 m/s; 489 kn).

After 11 September, Jarrah's girlfriend, Şengün, filed a missing person report in Bochum. Jarrah became a suspect as FBI agents found a "Ziad Jarrahi" in the flight manifest (the additional *i* at the end a possible misspelling).

## Mistaken identity claims

There have been claims that Jarrah was not a hijacker but rather an innocent passenger or that he was not present on the plane and his identity was stolen. It has been pointed out that his behavior deviated from the profile presented by the other hijackers and that the passengers reported three and not four hijackers. However, the October 2006 emergence of a video shot on 18 January 2000, showing Jarrah recording his will alongside Mohamed Atta has cast heavy doubt on such claims.

Shortly after the 11 September attacks, family and friends claimed that Jarrah did not exhibit the same "smoldering political resentments" or "cultural conservatism" as Mohamed Atta and the other hijackers. Although his family was Sunni Muslim, Jarrah was not raised with a background of religious conviction and did not hold to an obviously conservative lifestyle. Personnel at the flight school Jarrah attended described him as "a normal person". Jarrah called his family two days, and his girlfriend Aysel Şengün three hours, before boarding United Airlines Flight 93; Şengün described the conversation as "pleasant" and "normal". She also claimed that he never mentioned any names of the other hijackers. In his call two days before the attack, Jarrah told his family he would be coming home for a cousin's wedding. "It makes no sense," his uncle Jamal claimed. "He said he had even bought a new suit for the occasion." Jarrah's family in Lebanon claimed in September 2001 that he was an innocent passenger on the plane. His uncle, Jamal Jarrah, is currently a deputy in the Lebanese parliament and was appointed minister on 18 December 2016, and a member of the Future Movement, a pro-Saudi Arabian political party led by Saad Hariri. On 2 January 2012, in a televised interview on Future TV, MP Jarrah denied his nephew's involvement in the 9/11 attacks, alluding to a conspiracy.[*citation needed*]

On 23 October 2001, John Ashcroft claimed that 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 Jarrah's three apartments in Hamburg had been connected with the other hijackers. One high-ranking German police official stated, "The only information we have connecting the three Hamburg suspects is the FBI's assertion that there is a connection." In October 2006, however, a video surfaced showing Atta and Jarrah together in Afghanistan, clearly connecting Jarrah to the members of the Hamburg cell.

The 9/11 Commission concluded without qualification that Jarrah was a hijacker on the plane when it crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

In October 2006, an al-Qaeda video was released showing Jarrah and Mohamed Atta recording their wills in January 2000 in Osama bin Laden's Tarnak Farms base near Kandahar, Afghanistan.