By MEMRI
On September 11, 2018, the Egyptian daily Al-Masri Al-Yawm, which is affiliated with the Al-Sisi regime, published an investigative article titled “On the Occasion of 17th Anniversary of 9/11: Documents from the 9/11 File Reveal that the Commander of the Operation, Muhammad ‘Atta, Died in 2008.”
The article states that the Egyptian interior ministry refused to record September 11, 2001 as the date of the death of Muhammad ‘Atta, an Egyptian national who was one of the planners of the attacks and one of the hijackers of the plane that hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Instead, the ministry issued a death certificate noting October 29, 2008 as the date of his death, and even this was done only after the family appealed to the courts to demand the issuance of a death certificate so they could arrange matters of inheritance, and following an investigation by the State Security Investigations Service.
The article is accompanied by photos of official documents, including the aforementioned death certificate, which are implied to cast doubt on ‘Atta’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks. The article also states that the attacks are still shrouded in “secrets,” and mentions speculations about the possible involvement of the Mossad or the FBI in them.
The following are translated excerpts from the article:
The article in Al-Masri Al-Yawm: “Documents from the 9/11 File Reveal that the Commander of the Operation, Muhammad ‘Atta, Died in 2008”
“Although 17 years have passed since the 9/11 attacks, or ‘Black September’, as America called them, secrets [regarding them] continue to emerge. This incident in 2001 served as an excuse for destroying countries in the Arab world. The flag of terror passed from one organization to another. During the subsequent years, some people believed – while others denied – that the Israeli Mossad had been behind the events [of 9/11] and had planned them in order to stoke conflict between the U.S. and the Middle East and Arab world. A former interior minister, Habib Al-‘Adly, in his court testimony, accused the U.S. even of involvement in the destruction that befell Egypt in January 2011.[1] He [also] claimed that the FBI had received warning from an FBI source within Al-Qaeda that a large terror operation in the U.S. was being planned, but did not heed this warning, and that [the source] warned them again in August 2001, but to no avail.
“Muhammad ‘Atta, or Muhammad Muhammad Al-Amir Al-Sayyed Awad ‘Atta, [to give his full name], became a symbol on 9/11, and the global media named him and showed his picture, calling him one of the perpetrators of the attacks. Moreover, Osama bin Laden named him as the hero of the operation and its greatest martyr, because he flew one of the two planes [that crashed into the World Trade Center]. His father, all the while, denied the accusations against his son and said that he had not been involved in the events, and he kept denying it for seven years, until his death on September 2, 2007. Throughout these years, no death certificate had been issued [for Muhammad ‘Atta], and the surprising fact is that the [Egyptian] Interior Ministry refused to record September 11, 2001 as the date of his death. His family kept fighting in the courts, citing reports in the global media that he had died on 9/11, so it could complete the inheritance procedures. The most curious thing of all is that the [Egyptian] authorities demanded an investigation by the [Egyptian State Security] Investigations Service to determine whether Muhammad ‘Atta was dead or not. A police officer from the police station in the Pyramids [area], where the family lived, conducted an investigation which determined that [‘Atta] had been away from the country for over five years. Therefore the court issued a death certificate which recorded his death as occurring seven years, one month and 18 days after Black Tuesday [9/11], namely on October 29, 2008. The place of his death [was given as] ‘outside Egypt,’ his age as 40 years, one month and 28 days, and his family status as ‘single.’ He was born on September 1, 1968 in the Kafr Al-Sheikh governorate. His father was a lawyer… and his mother a homemaker. His two sisters are in the fields of medicine and science, and Muhammad ‘Atta, their younger brother, obtained a degree in construction engineering at the University of Cairo in 1990.”
‘Atta’s death certificate, as presented in the article
[1] Habib Al-Adly served as Egypt’s interior minister in Hosni Mubarak’s last government, and was prosecuted along with Mubarak for the killing of protesters during the January 2011 revolution. In his trial he claimed that security elements at the U.S. embassy in Cairo and at the American University in Cairo were responsible for the death of the protesters. Al-Masri Al-Yawm (Egypt), January 26,
