One of the suspected hijackers in the US terrorist attacks, Mohamed Atta, spoke of a "sacrifice to Allah" in the dedication of his university degree thesis in August 1999, the German mass-market daily Bild reported Monday.
Bild printed the front page of the thesis, in which Atta used a quotation from the Koran as his dedication to his professor: "My prayer and my sacrifice and my death belong to Allah, the god of all worlds."
The professor, Dittmar Machule, looked at the dedication again after he learned that his former student was a key suspect in the assault on US targets.
"When I read this sentence again, it sent an ice-cold shudder down my back," Machule told Bild.
Machule said the thesis, which was on urban development in the north Syrian town of Aleppo, did not contain any other unusual religious or political references.
The weekly German newspaper Die Zeit reported in its Monday edition that Atta had visited Syria several times as part of his thesis research.
Egyptian-born Atta, who lived for eight years in the northern German port city of Hamburg, had studied at the Technical University Hamburg-Harburg from 1992 until March this year.
Atta identified himself to German police in his residency application as being from the United Arab Emirates.
Die Zeit quoted a fellow student saying that Atta was "very skeptical about the achievements of the western world" and that "the ever accelerating Americanization of his homeland [and] the entry of modernization into the Arab world did not please him."
He was registered as a passenger on American Airlines flight 11, the first to crash into the World Trade Center. US authorities believe Atta took over the controls and piloted the plane into the Center's north tower.
Two other suspects identified as Ziad Samir Jarrah, 26, a Lebanese national, and Marwan Al-Shehhi, 23, from the United Arab Emirates, also lived and studied in Hamburg -- BERLIN (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
