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©New York Times
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 19, 2001
CAIRO -- Sometimes shouting, sometimes crying, sometimes shaking his head, Mohammed al-Amir Atta said on Tuesday that his son and namesake was a shy man who could not possibly have sent a hijacked jet slicing through the first World Trade Center tower.
"Mohammed. Oh God! He is so decent, so shy and tender," said the father, a 65-year-old retired lawyer. "He was so gentle. I used to tell him, 'Toughen up, boy!"'
Atta stood on the barren cement doorstep of his 11th-floor Cairo apartment on Tuesday in a cream leisure suit, alternating between rage at the picture being painted of his son as one of the attack's ringleaders and pride that his boy had done well abroad after graduating with average marks in architecture from Cairo University's Faculty of Engineering.
The FBI has identified the 33-year-old son of Atta as one of the hijackers. He has been traced to at least two flying schools in Florida in the 14 months before last week's attack.
The elder Atta laced his conversation with fierce attacks against the United States, a "tyrant nation" that he blasted repeatedly for supporting Israel and for moral contagions like adultery and homosexual marriage.
Some of his son's university friends in Germany have described Mohammed Atta as a sharply intelligent, strict, serious man who seemed to retreat socially, seeking solace from religion.
The elder Atta said he never encouraged his children to be social, even avoiding the incessant contact between relatives so common in Egypt. Neighbors in their slightly tattered, middle-class neighborhood in Giza, just off the road to the Pyramids, confirmed that family members rarely said more than hello.
"We keep our doors closed and that is why my two daughters and my son are academically and morally excellent," Atta said.
He was outraged at reports that his son was drinking in a bar on the eve of the attacks.
"My son is a hijacker and drinks vodka!" yelled Atta, his face reddening as he waved his hands. "It is like accusing a decent, veiled religious girl of smuggling prostitutes into Egypt. It is nonsense, imagination!"
Indeed, two German students who spent the months of August to October 1995 in Cairo with Atta while completing a field study said they did not drink alcohol around him because it made him uncomfortable.
The elder Atta said that while his son was religious, his fervor did not extend to politics.
He had refused, his father said, to take part in a neighborhood basketball league when he found out it was organized by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most established religious political organization.
"He was a donkey when it came to politics," his father said. "I advised him, like my father advised me, that politics equals hypocrisy."
The elder Atta confirmed that the picture in all the newspapers was that on his son's passport, but he said the younger man might have been murdered and his documents stolen. He added that he did not know many details of his son's life in the United States, other than that he thought he was there for more education. The younger man was last in Egypt a year ago.
If he was on the plane, and there were books left in a suitcase about flying, it was because he had a curious mind, the father said. Someone like Israel's intelligence agency had the capacity to organize such an attack, the father said. But his son, an urban planning architect, did not.
"I do not believe my son did it, I am sure he is alive," the father said, "He was afraid of flying."