Mohamed Atta is such an interesting character imo

I get where you're coming from. I feel no empathy for Atta but I think it is important to set aside emotion to make an attempt at understanding what leads someone to go down this path. I have had a very religious phase in my own life (in christianity) in which I thought that being extremely religious and focused on the next life is worth giving up everything else in this life.

Assuming he felt awkward and inadequate, like he doesn't fit in this world for whatever reason, he might have turned to religion as an alternative, and with a strong disdain for this world came a strong religious zeal, giving up everything in this life for the next one. Combining this strong desire and his youth and lack of experience, he was the ideal vessel for extremist ideology.

This is just me conjecturing and all this might be wrong, this is just an attempt at guessing what might have happened in his life based on things I experienced in regards to religion.

One piece of 9/11 trivia I’ll never forget is Atta’s tendency to eat unpeeled, unflavored mashed potatoes out of a bucket he kept in his fridge, due to his purported hatred of food.

It’s very likely that this was actually a symptom of depression or BPD, which almost certainly influenced his fall into jihadism.

An interesting character to say the least, I find it interesting that in the few pictures there are of him where he’s smiling they seemed very forced, almost as though there wasn’t an ounce of happiness inside the guy. I’d be interested to hear more about the other hijackers’ backstories as well, almost nothing online about Hanjour, al-Nami and Moqed. Would love to know more about their personalities and what led them to carrying out the attacks.

This man killed thousands of people and caused irreparable pain for so many others. That’s all I see, yes he’s human, but so flawed. When you feel you must kill for religion you are spiritually handicapped.

Wasn't he the hijacker who was keen on becoming a town planner, but his studies didn't lead to a career? That's a bit like Hitler being a failed artist, in a way. No excuses for what either eventually did, though. Just their earlier pursuits may have set them on different paths.

I really like this post because judging from the comments it has become the 9/11 version of the Baby Hitler Question. If you could travel back in time to when Hitler was a baby would you kill him or spare him? In the same vain, is pre 9/11 Atta worthy of pity? Now that he is known only as the terrorist he has become, was there ever a time where he wasn't to become only that? Was he ever innocent, or were these photos always pictures of a murderer? Would you kill baby Atta? I think there isn't a wrong answer to this, but maybe that's just me.

The scary part is another Mohamed Atta is being created somewhere in Gaza or Ukraine right now.

This is all a bunch of speculation honestly. I do not agree with labeling him as a tragic self-hating character who was driven to do what he did through his own feelings of inadequacy and the manipulation of others. When you really dig deep into him, a very different character emerges, that of an arrogant, driven, and incredibly effective militant commander who was genuine in his cause. Atta lived a good life, he was middle class, and had a bright future ahead of him. It was Atta who decided to travel to Afghanistan to fight for what he believed in, nobody manipulated him. When Bin Laden presented the planes operation to him, he did not have any second thoughts, and did not need to be convinced, he was most likely ecstatic at being given the honor to lead the first large scale Islamist attack against the world’s mightiest superpower, and why? Because he wasn’t a victim of Bin Laden’s manipulation, he saw himself as a holy soldier of god, and took great pride in this image of himself, and he was genuine, he really did it because of his beliefs, and a desire to avenge the victims of American foreign policy and gain heaven as a reward. Mass killers who hate themselves go shoot up places or do something of that scale, they don’t end up commanding the most devastating attack in the history of the world’s most powerful nation, that is something that can only be driven by a real cause, that being ideology and religion.

He never really smiles. The mouth does, but not his eyes.

The duality of man is frightening

Understandable. The definition of evil actions but complex thought process. He was a horrible human who deserves to have his very name smeared for eternity. But as someone interested in the criminal investigation field for my career I do find it important to understand his background and put aside any personal hatred and emotions. Because once we decipher people like this and their complex history the easier it’ll be to spot them and prevent them from committing truly atrocious acts. In order to do that we have to fully consider their possible intelligence and complex human background.

This is what happen when you give a religion to a guy with a horrible childhood and mental illness, in most of the case the person becomes extremist. What a shame

He was just a weapon used by someone else.

I really wished to have seen a video of him and see what some women and the Airport ticket agent said about Mohamed, how his eyes were suppose to be pure evil and dead.

You should watch the episode in the series “Mugshots” about him. It’s on YouTube

Awesome post. Obviously I abhor the man and his actions, but from a psychological standpoint I can’t help but be interested. The Mugshots episode of him was really interesting. I also find Jarah really interesting too. Out of all the guys he seemed to be the only one apprehensive of the operation. He had friends, a girlfriend, had a genuine interest in learning to fly (he wanted to be a pilot if I remember correctly, his father said no). I also remember reading that Atta at one point was having a hard time “getting through to him”.

He also allegedly took quite a bit more time than the other hi-jackers in gaining control of the plane. I always wonder if he sat there just contemplating his actions and how deep he got himself into it, there was no turning back. Given his delayed time in taking control the passengers had more time to hear about the other attacks. If he hadn’t waited I wonder how differently that would have played out.

By no means am I empathizing with him, he’s just as big a piece of shit as the rest of them. But given that out of all the guys he stood out a bit differently and seemed to perhaps show at least some sort of apprehension.

I have no empathy for this monster.

I wish i could agree, but I can’t. He never struck me as someone who hated himself. Even if he’s smiling in these photos, people describe him, even the people who knew him, as cold and callous with dead eyes. I don’t think there’s any complicated with him. He found fanatic religion. Unlike Jarrah, he found his way into it, he wasn’t taught by other people. He did everything on his own. Perhaps not everyone is true evil, but I think Atta is as close as it gets.

EDIT: I wanted to add a bit more to this now that I'm fully awake. I'm also interested in the criminal mind; why people do what they do. To understand why people act the way they do, we must first realize that everyone sees themselves as behaving normally. When we think about other evil people - let's even use the hijackers for example, if we're going to talk about Atta, we still hear that they maintained relationships with other people, and other people have nice things to say about them. Jarrah had a girlfriend who loved him, and he loved her. al-Mihdhar had a wife and a child. Even various instructors and people had better things to say about the other men. But Atta? There's not a single nice word anyone has to say about him at all. I don't even know if anyone said he was respectful. The guy who took his ticket at Logan said he had the coldest eyes he met, his instructor said that he was argumentative and objective; his old hosts didn't want him in their house anymore because he was disrespectful to them; his professors didn't think that highly of him and he refused to work with a woman on his grad thesis (he didn't even shake her hand when he was done). Looking around, there's not a single nice thing anyone has said about Atta. He doesn't seem to have formed any strong relationships other than the ones with al-Qaeda, and I don't trust their words at all - and I surely don't trust a video of him laughing and smiling at the al-Qaeda training camp.

Basically, I see where you're coming from. This can be applied to lots of villains in history. But I do not think this can be applied to Mohammed Atta. We may not never know true evil psychopathy, but Mohammed Atta, with the little to no relationships he has maintained during his life, the fact that he has never left a positive impression on anyone despite being in the United States for over two years, makes me think that, no, his struggles aren't with "I hate myself" or "I want to die." It's not even that he didn't get a job after architecture, he still was in grad school and he was postponing his work during the time he was in the training camps in al-Qaeda. Religion came first for him, and he was determined to become a martyr, whether that meant taking himself out or other people out with him, or both. Mohammed Atta isn't a tragic "he could have been better" to me, not like Ziad Jarrah is. I think that Atta, with his childhood, was going to turn out the way he did. You can of course go back and say "if this hadn't happened to him in childhood, would he [...]", but you can use that argument for probably every single criminal out there, too. It's just not enough for Atta. This is a man who, despite having a prestigious education, working on his master's, his education paid for, a good life ahead of him, still chose religion and mass murder. He wasn't swayed or manipulated, he chose this on his own. And to add onto the "if he had married," if I remember right, Atta Sr. said that he had met a girl, but Atta Jr. told his mother that "she wasn't the right Muslim girl" for him, something along that lines.

Sorry this got so long. I just wanted to put in my two cents.

I honestly think he could have been autistic as well. I have never really seen him as pure evil either (actually I have never really seen any of the hijackers as evil. Anti-American thought is strong with many in the region. It’s a natural thing that happens with foreign policy. I am not excusing what he did either. That said I also do see him as complicated.

He also seemed to be fairly solitary compared to the other hijackers. Look at Ziad Jarrah for example. He came from a close knit family and was in daily touch with them. He’s completely unique in this regard compared to the others. He would go out drinking with his flight school classmates and teacher. He had a fiancé. I think that’s a big reason so many of his friends and family were in denial initially. He just didn’t fit the profile of someone who would take part in a terrorist attack. It finally took hearing his voice on the cockpit for family to finally accept it.

Great post and I can agree with much of what you said. I don't understand the hate of your post, though? Should we hate the documentaries covering these assholes? Not necessarily, but it provides insight into the minds of those who are capable of such atrocities.

Doesn't mean I agree with them, not in the slightest. Atta was driven. I mean, fucking driven. Why? How? These are questions that should be asked, so we can understand and prepare for future attacks. The CIA does this everyday, right now. We learn nothing if we don't ask these questions nor study the reasons why.

Everyone's a "good kid" until they get radicalized and brainwashed into murder bots.

Fuck this guy.

What makes me think about this guy & his little buddies is obviously he was “human “ but he came here to America, how did he not look around & think “ya no what! This place ain’t so bad” no he was so deeply focused on his task that nothing could change his mind. If only somehow, someway we knew what was going to happen. Somehow! This guy stayed for a short time in Coral Springs Fla! Right at 10001 Atlantic Blvd apt 122! If only I knew, my god I drove on that road and by that place every single day! It’s mind boggling to think what he done. Hardly a word back to the tower and bent on death.

Nothing interesting about him. I cannot and refuse to see him as a victim in all of this. I used to get bullied quite badly when I was young and so did many others. He had a say in what he did and that's it. Excellent German knowledge my ass. Look at Putin...same crap.

Wow I didn’t think a sub meant to archive the 911 tragedy would have this. This disgusting post of sympathy for a pathetic thing pretending to be human. Which helped in the reason this sub exists at all. I don’t know weather to cry or be angry at such a stupidity of it. All I see when I look at this picture is a thing that wanted to harm people for no fault of their own, White or black, Christians, Atheists and yes even Muslims it didn’t matter. All it wanted was to cause harm and misery.

I say this with a heavy heart but the drip in pictures 2 and 3 is unreal

You might be interested in reading "ATTA" by Jarret Kobek, a fictional autobiography of him that explores his motives.

He was in the same class as my Bfs Moms ex-Husband

Do you believe the theory that he was a closeted gay man?

Don't care,

B I H Mohammed Atta

1968-2001

Found this interesting/relevant https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=psychology_pubs

I agree with a lot of what you posted, and I've thought about this too.

I remember watching a documentary where these two female interviewers tracked down Atta's dad and tried to interview him, and he responded with violence, threatening to break their equipment. Very telling of the kind of person he was. I don't have empathy for Atta, but I can see how growing up under these circumstances set him down the path he ended up on.