The ‘Insecure’ German Terrorist Who Loaned Mohammed Atta His Computer

On August 20, 2001, Said Bahaji, a German citizen, booked a flight from Hamburg to Karachi, Pakistan, with a layover in Istanbul, set to depart on September 3. Bahaji, who was a roommate of Mohammed Atta in Hamburg, provided aid to the 9/11 hijackers as they were in the United States. He departed Germany shortly before the 9/11 attacks and was considered an elusive fugitive until his death in 2013.

Bahaji was the sole German national among the Hamburg group. Born in Morocco, he returned to Germany for his education at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. After serving five months in the German Army and receiving a medical discharge, he studied alongside Atta. Together, they advocated for the establishment of a Muslim prayer room at the university.

He frequented the al-Quds mosque in Hamburg with the hijackers. A video from his 1999 marriage, discovered post-9/11, featured Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and bin al-Shibh attending. The FBI later remarked that the video contained a political speech, ending with an Arabic war poem. Bahaji's decision to travel to Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 led him to seek guidance from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

He was informed that traveling to Afghanistan should be done promptly due to potential travel difficulties. Three Hamburg associates, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Bahaji, and Zakariya Essabar, later became targets of German arrest warrants for alleged terrorist organization membership, murder, and aircraft piracy. Atta and bin al-Shibh reportedly utilized Bahaji's computer for internet research, but his involvement seemed limited to this extent.

However, his ticket purchase marked him as the first in a sequence of operatives who journeyed to Pakistan (and Afghanistan) prior to the attacks. The following day would reveal the FBI and CIA's error of confusing Khalid al-Mihdhar with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Khallad, inadvertently allowing 9/11 mastermind KSM to evade detection.