Marwan al Shehhi
Marwan al Shehhi was born on May 9, 1978, in Ras al Khaimah, the United Arab
Emirates. His father, who died in 1997, was a prayer leader at the local mosque.
After graduating from high school in 1995, Shehhi joined the Emirati military
and received half a year of basic training before gaining admission to a
military scholarship program that would fund his continued study in Germany.70
Shehhi first entered Germany in April 1996.After sharing an apartment in Bonn
for two months with three other scholarship students, Shehhi moved in with a
German family, with whom he resided for several months before moving into his
own apartment. During this period, he came across as very religious, praying
five times a day. Friends also remember him as convivial and "a regular
guy," wearing Western clothes and occasionally renting cars for trips to
Berlin, France, and the Netherlands.71
As a student, Shehhi was less than a success. Upon completing a course in
German, he enrolled at the University of Bonn in a program for technical,
mathematical, and scientific studies. In June 1997, he requested a leave from
his studies, citing the need to attend to unspecified "problems" in
his home country. Although the university denied his request, Shehhi left
anyway, and consequently was compelled to repeat the first semester of his
studies. In addition to having academic difficulties at this time, Shehhi
appeared to become more extreme in the practice of his faith; for example, he
specifically avoided restaurants that cooked with or served alcohol. In late
1997, he applied for permission to complete his course work in Hamburg, a
request apparently motivated by his desire to join Atta and Binalshibh. Just how
and when the three of them first met remains unclear, although they seemed to
know each other already when Shehhi relocated to Hamburg in early 1998.Atta and
Binalshibh moved into his apartment in April.72
The transfer to Hamburg did not help Shehhi's academic progress; he was
directed by the scholarship program administrators at the Emirati embassy to
repeat his second semester starting in August 1998, but back in Bonn. Shehhi
initially flouted this directive, however, and did not reenroll at the
University of Bonn until the following January, barely passing his course there.
By the end of July 1999, he had returned to Hamburg, applying to study
shipbuilding at the Technical University and, more significantly, residing once
again with Atta and Binalshibh, in an apartment at 54 Marienstrasse.73
After Shehhi moved in with Atta and Binalshibh, his evolution toward Islamic
fundamentalism became more pronounced. A fellow Emirati student who came to
Hamburg to visit Shehhi noticed he no longer lived as comfortably as before.
Shehhi now occupied an old apartment with a roommate, had no television, and
wore inexpensive clothes. When asked why he was living so frugally, Shehhi
responded that he was living the way the Prophet had lived.74
Similarly, when someone asked why he and Atta never laughed, Shehhi retorted,
"How can you laugh when people are dying in Palestine?"75
