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1995:

Hijacker Atta Still Connected to Group Linked to MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD -

In a three-month trip to his hometown of Cairo, Egypt, 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta demonstrates that he is still a member of an engineering syndicate linked to the Muslim Brotherhood (see 1990).

He takes the two Germans students he is traveling with, VOLKER HAUTH and RALPH BODENSTEIN, T THE SYNDICATE’s EATING CLUB. According to Hauth, Atta does nothing during the trip he knows about that suggests he is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but the group’s influence on the club is obvious.
[Washington Post, 9/22/2001; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 10/15/2001]

A former CIA officer who served undercover in Damascus, Syria, will later say,

“At every stage in Atta’s journey is the Muslim Brotherhood.” [New Yorker, 7/18/2003]

Reminds me of Obama’s Pakistan journey with his Muslim college friends. It fits, all their parents are rich. Yes, Obama came from a privileged private school background. His mother made good money and his grandmother was VP of a bank. Name of the bank? Islamic banking rules? Microfinance?

“A former CIA officer who served undercover in Damascus, Syria, will later say,

“At every stage in Atta’s journey is the Muslim Brotherhood.” [New Yorker, 7/18/2003]””

RALPH BODENSTEIN INTERVIEW Interview -

Beirut, Monday 15 October, 2001

Liz Jackson interviews Ralph Bodenstein who studied urban planning with Mohamed Atta at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harbug. He met him in 1994, when they, along with Volker Hauth, began working on a project in Cairo that was sponsored by the German government.

Did you ever go to the engineer’s syndicate?

Yeah. Sure because we had to meet some people there. I don’t remember the names anymore.

Did you get a sense of the politics that were around?

Well I mean we talked about these politics naturally because the engineering syndicate was one of those that was increasingly being influenced by fundamentalist movements, I mean it was not only the engineer’s one but several different ones as well were one of the political instruments the conservative or fundamentalists Muslims were using in order to increase their influence on state politics or on municipality because it was an organisation that was rather basic democratic, so people could bring people into places and pose where they wanted to be and it was not centrally controlled, but there was as far as I remember lots of critics about these processes going on by that time. There were people that were very critical about this change of politics within the syndicate because there were actually also many other people, engineers within the syndicates who did not like the syndicate to be instrumentalised for such a political direction.

And what did Mohamed think about it?

Oh no Mohamed was in favour of this idea. I mean in favour of this change.

The increasing Islamisation of the syndicate?

Yeah he was in favour of that because he was in favour of having a larger, a better lobby for Islamic social ideas and these things, so for him this was one of the necessary and important means to achieve this goal.

So do you think they were an important influence in terms of his developing ideas…The political ideas that were focused in the syndicate?

Well I’m not sure you know that he was linked up to the syndicate in a closer way because he had studied and then he left Egypt so generally you only get in contact with the syndicate after you have finished studies, and you start working and since he hadn’t worked at least not for a long time there was probably no real possibility for the syndicate influencing his views. He might still have received or read something about them, because it was always in the newspapers because there was this discussion going on, on this process and so there were comments and interviews with people who were in favour of this and who were discussing the ideas actually that were behind it, so he knew what it was about and actually he was, he thinking about this and so there might have been influence, because he read about it and heard about it, but no direct personal influence of certain people within the syndicate I don’t…

Do you remember going, do you remember any conversations or meeting any people who were from that Islamic group when you went? Do you remember what was talked about or anything about going to …?

No there was, there was nothing from this. I mean and all the organisations or planning offices we went to had no link to such an approach so I never observed that kind of conversation.

When you went back to Hamburg after the trip to Cairo did you keep in touch?

Well we kept in touch for a while because we still had to finalise our research results so I mean I stayed longer in Egypt, then I stayed for six months, even more so I came back only in early Spring ‘96 to Germany and we met up in Hamburg then for a weekend in order to discuss what we had already written and to coordinate what still had to be written and afterwards I only had for a certain while indirect contact because Volker Hauth was sometimes telling me about what Mohamed was doing but also Volker Hauth lost contact at that time to Mohamed. So I had contact with Mohamed after Spring of ‘96.

Did Volker Hauth tell you about how he was getting on or whether or not he seemed to be getting more …?

No he remarked one time that he was now working for a company in Hamburg and that he was still studying and working … and these things you know. Volker Hauth didn’t see him much either anymore so … even Volker Hauth couldn’t tell me about him.

Do you think it’s fair to say he had a strong sense of social justice?

Well yeah it was very very strong. It was a very obvious strong sense of justice yeah.