Men of different characters named in terror attack
( 2001-09-17 10:13 ) (7 )

They were so different.

Marwan Al-Shehhi was the victim of the bullying of a half brother, who forced him into a marriage that lasted only two weeks and ordered him to study aviation. Ziad Jarrah loved women and booze and lived the pampered life of an only son.

US and German investigators suspect both men of being part of a group formed in the German city of Hamburg this year to destroy high-profile US targets. The group also allegedly included Mohammed Atta, a relative of Al-Shehhi.

In Switzerland, the SonntagsBlick newspaper said Atta and Al-Shehhi, accused of seizing the planes that smashed Tuesday into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, spent time in Switzerland during the summer and stayed in a Zurich hotel. It said they purchased pocket knives and cardboard cutters -- the weapons used to commandeer the four jetliners on Tuesday.

In the United States, one man is in custody and authorities issued another warrant and arrested a second man in New York as a possible material witness, US Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said on Sunday. Twenty-five people were detained for possible immigration violations, ensuring they are held while investigators determine whether they had anything to do with Tuesday's attacks.

In the spacious yard of the residence of the extended Jarrah family, middle-aged men sat somberly on Sunday on plastic chairs under the garden's vines in this prosperous village in the heart of the Bekaa Valley.

The hush was that of a wake, but it was no wake. The village's sheik has said that any display of mourning was not appropriate without evidence that Jarrah was indeed dead.

The family, the town's most prominent Sunni Muslim clan, is stunned that anyone could believe that their son, a slim, bespectacled man who turned 26 in May, could have boarded United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco on a suicide mission. The hijacked plane crashed in Pennsylvania.

US reports said that one of the men who helped commandeer one of the four planes used in Tuesday's attacks was named Ziad Jarrahi and that US aviation authorities listed a Ziad Jarrah as holding a pilot's license. The difference in spellings of the last name could be a result of differing English transliterations of the same Arabic names.

"If he had been on the plane, then he would have gone down as a victim, like the other passengers, and his family deserves compassion and condolences," Jarrah's uncle, Jamal, said.

Ziad Jarrah had a modern upbringing that included an education at Christian schools, his uncle said. His two sisters go to the beach and wear sleeveless dresses -- choices Jarrah never tried to change. That his parents -- his father is a civil servant while his mother is a teacher -- sent their only son abroad for an education is not unusual. Many Lebanese families do the same.

According to Jamal Jarrah, his nephew rarely went to the mosque for Friday prayers and was indifferent to politics in a country where politics dominated people's lives during the 1975-1990 civil war.

Jamal Jarrah pulled out a picture taken last year at a family wedding showing his nephew dancing in a light, open-necked shirt and a dark jacket, a stylish, light beard shadowing his cheeks.

"Does that look like a person who would carry out a bombing?" Jamal said.

Questions, though, nag. Why did Jarrah ask his family to urgently wire him US$2,000 earlier this month on top of his monthly stipend of US$2,000?

Last year, the Turkish girlfriend Jarrah had in Germany called up his family to say Jarrah had been missing for weeks. Is it true, as some reports had suggested, that Jarrah had gone to Afghanistan?

What about the suitcase that German federal investigators said they found in the apartment of Jarrah's girlfriend and seized as evidence? They contained "airplane-related documents," investigators said.

Last year, Jarrah left Hamburg, where he was specializing in flight engineering, to take aviation courses in Florida. Around the same time, two other Hamburg residents and suspects in the bombing -- Al-Shehhi and Atta -- left the same city for the same state.

Al-Shehhi and Atta were students at Hamburg's Technical University.

According to German media, Al-Shehhi, who investigators believe was on the second plane that crashed into the World Trade Center, arrived in Bonn in 1996.

Bild am Sonntag newspaper said Al-Shehhi moved into an unsuspecting family's guest room, paying 550 marks (US$255) a month, before relocating to Hamburg.

Officials in Hamburg have said that Atta was part of an Islamic prayer group at the university. Once, the university's chancellor attended a prayer sessions -- apparently to check for radical Islamic content -- but he said he found nothing to be concerned about.

Both Al-Shehhi and Atta were born in the United Arab Emirates, according to German investigators.

In the United Arab Emirates, a relative of Al-Shehhi said the young man was the son of a Muslim cleric who died two years ago.

The relative, who spoke on condition of anonymity in Al-Shehhi's hometown of Ras al-Khaimah, said Al-Shehhi was extremely religious, withdrawn and rarely socialized with his peers.

Son of an Egyptian mother and an Emirati clergyman who died two years ago, Al-Shehhi would accompany his father to the mosque at all times, and would make the call to prayer if his father was late.

The relative said Al-Shehhi was dominated by his older half brother, Mohammed, who forced him to get married -- a marriage that lasted only two weeks -- and ordered him to go to Germany in 1999 to study aviation.

While in Germany, he told his family he wasn't coming back to the Emirates, apparently to escape his elder brother. He rarely called home. His mother pleaded with him to return, and she once said that she felt someone was listening to their calls and threatening him to keep him from returning.