The Hamburg Cell

The Hamburg Cell comprised three of the 9/11 pilots and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni national who was unable to get a US visa and is the only surviving member. The 9/11 Commission (page 165) reported that the cell members were recruited to Al Qaeda in 1999 after a random conversation on a train in Germany. They traveled to Afghanistan that November, met Osama bin Laden and, according to the Commission, were immediately given their first mission: hijacking and flying multiple civilian airliners into American landmarks. Less than two years later they did manage to execute that most audacious and successful of terrorist attacks in modern history:

"The available evidence indicates that in 1999, Atta, al-Shibh, Shehhi, and Jarrah decided to fight in Chechnya against the Russians. According to al-Shibh, a chance meeting on a train in Germany caused the group to travel to Afghanistan instead. An individual named Khalid al Masri approached al-Shibh and Shehhi (because they were Arabs with beards, al-Shibh thinks) and struck up a conversation about jihad in Chechnya."

Taking September 1997 as an alternative start date for the Hamburg Cell planning 9/11 puts a far more realistic timescale on their role. It would give them two years to plan and prepare for the attacks – studying flight paths, schedules, pilot training and close quarter combat – before even traveling to Afghanistan. It would account for how soon after their Afghan visit the three pilots arrived in America too, within six months, by June 2000. Ramzi bin al-Shibh called the flight instruction manuals pictured right his Hamburg souvenirs, suggesting a far longer use of those manuals than the six months the Commission allows for. When tied to Jarrah’s September 1997 aircraft engineering course change – the likely source of those textbooks – it presents a compelling case for my alternative start date. But mine is not a random theory; its an evidence based assertion due to where I was in September 1997 - dining with Yousef in Yemen, a 100% facial recognition match for Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Although al-Shibh was traveling between Yemen and Germany in 1997 I don’t think they are the same person but are very likely related. Maybe Yousef was al-Shibh's brother Ahmed:

Ramzi bin al-Shibh's Hamburg souvenirs
Source: Yosri Fouda of Al Jazeera

I hope those two indisputable facts (as per my photographic evidence), in conjunction with a third fact that the 9/11 trials have not even started yet, will prompt enough people to demand that my dinner companion Yousef is identified and the exact date of Jarrah’s course change is made public. I bet it was 25 September, the same day I dined with Yousef and we spoke in detail about a 9/11 style attack. I’ve documented that conversation and my week long visit to Yemen here: How, Where and When the 9/11 Plot Began. Yousef can be identified from my photo or by the man who arranged our meeting – Saeed Alrobaidi, managing director of the British allied, multi-billion-dollar Hayel Saeed Anam Group headquarters in 1997 Taiz.

My Theories and Conjecture on the Hamburg Cell
I think the four Hamburg Cell members were committed to their Jihad long before 1997, which is why Jarrah was able to change course and home town in Germany at the drop-of-a-hat that September. Prior to embarking on their Jihad Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his nephew Ramzi Yousef both studied in Western countries, engineering in America and electronics in Britain respectively. I guess the Hamburg Cell members were doing the same – getting an education while looking for opportunities to advance their cause. That cause, their grievance, can be summed up in three words: American Foreign Policy. And, as confirmed by my conversation with Yousef, very specifically the USA's blind (self-harming) support for Israel. Yousef even lamented the 1995 murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, calling it a lost last chance for peace.

They will have networked in Germany through front organisations like Al Quds mosque in Hamburg. They'll have met active operators like Mohamedou Slahi who I guess was one of KSM’s regional managers. There’s evidence (pictured right) that Slahi setup clandestine communications networks for such sleeper cells using guest-book messaging on innocuous websites he created. That’s very likely how KSM activated the Hamburg Cell and the 9/11 plot from Yemen, via a guest-book message. The 9/11 Commission reported:

"When they later called Masri [from the recruitment meeting on a train] and expressed an interest in going to Chechnya, he told them to contact Abu Musab in Duisburg, Germany. Abu Musab turned out to be Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a significant Al Qaeda operator who, even then, was well known to US and German Intelligence, though neither government apparently knew he was operating in Germany in late 1999. When telephoned by al-Shibh and Shehhi, Slahi reportedly invited these promising recruits to come see him in Duisburg."

The Hamburg Cell members did meet Slahi (aka The Mauritanian) in Duisburg, where Jarrah had lived before moving to Hamburg. Slahi was a senior Al Qaeda operator, receiving calls from his uncle in Afghanistan who was using Osama bin Laden's satillite phone. He instructed them on security, travel and arranged contacts in Pakistan who would take them to Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden. It must have been very good advice because by December 1999 they were in Afghanistan sat next to OBL. Confirmation of a September 1997 start date for the Hamburg Cell's 9/11 plot would cast Slahi's 1999 meeting with them in a very different light.

After meeting Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, two Hamburg Cell members (Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi) were seen by multiple witnesses that same December partying at a holiday resort and attending a flight school in the Philippines. They stayed at the Woodland Park Resort Hotel that they'd visited in 1997 and earlier in 1999. Staff said they saw a Filipina leaving Atta’s room most mornings – a different woman every night they said. A waitress at the hotel called Gina Marcelo remembered a party thrown by Marwan al-Shehhi in some detail:

“There were about seven people. They rented the open area by the swimming pool… They drank Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey and mineral water. They barbecued shrimp and onions. They came in big vehicles, and they had a lot of money. They all had girlfriends.”

Witnesses saw Mohammed Atta being collected from the resort by a member of staff of a flying school on the nearby former US Air Force Clark air base. Atta's flight school driver was a US air force veteran, former master sergeant Melvin Troth. My old workmate Dave Dean managed a go-go bar for US air force personnel at Clark air base in the 1970s, after being injured in Vietnam. In 1997 Dean setup my visit to KSM's front company in Yemen - Dean drowned in Lake Hartwell on 8 January 2020, prompted I believe by my making that allegation public on twitter on 14 December 2019.

There is a bin Laden link to the Philippines but not from Osama; it was his brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa who helped finance the Abu Sayyaf Group on behalf of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. Abu Sayyaf were named and trained by Sayyaf, as were KSM and his nephew Ramzi Yousef, who taught Abu Sayyaf bomb making in 1992. Clearly KSM's network was familiar with and fond of the Philippines. There's a massive 9/11 link from 1994 Manila too. KSM, Ramzi Yousef and me (seperately) were all in Manila in 1994 and all saw the cafe front pictured right, as detailed at the beginning of My 9/11 Timeline. I was a backpacker on an extended holiday. They were terrorists planning to bomb a dozen trans-Pacific airliners and murder the Pope during his visit to the Philippines.

The Hamburg Cell did meet with Osama bin Laden in 1999 Afghanistan but I don't think that was to get instruction or approval for the 9/11 plot. My research shows Saudi back, Afghan Wahhabi professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf was the True 9/11 Mastermind - he was KSM's boss after all. I think that meeting was setup by Sayyaf to frame OBL and the Taliban (Sayyaf's enemies) for the 9/11 attacks. That'd be a favour to Sayyaf’s Saudi financiers as OBL represented a grave threat to the Saudi monarchy. I believe those assertions are evidenced by OBL's first statement about 9/11:

"I have already said that I am not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act."

OBL would not have condemned the attacks if he knew he'd met its perpetrator Mohammed Atta. He did subsequently admit that his speeches and public statements might have inspired the attacks but, as far as I know, OBL never took or claimed credit for planning or ordering the attacks. I think Sayyaf's aim was to create and lead a Wahhabi state in Afghanistan, something he came very close to achieving with US and NATO backing. The world owes the Taliban a debt of thanks for preventing that.

The one surviving Hamburg Cell member Ramzi bin-al-Shibh was arrested in 2002 and was the primary source for the hijacker / pilots activities as reported by the 9/11 Commission. Despite him being one of 9/11's most valueble witnesses he has been physically and psychologically tortured for the last twenty-plus years, first in secret CIA run prisons and then at Guantanamo. The Military Commission now claims he's too damaged to even stand trial.

I suspect al-Shibh's prime witness status is why he has been treated so mercilessly - the CIA literally destroyed evidence with their utterly pointless torture regime. Al-Shibh would undoubtedly be able to identify Yousef from my photo. I believe al-Shibh could be persuaded to go state witness, if I was given the opportunity to tell him the circumstances of my visit to KSM's front company in Yemen.

Ramzi bin al-Shibh's proof of life photo from Guantanamo

Those circumstances were: I was sent to Yemen by my Queen's Award winning British employer three months after I'd given my first 9/11 warning to a customer in Toronto. When al-Shibh realises that we were all patsies in this, I think he will accept that our best hope is the whole, unadulterated Truth.
Signed Anthony C Heaford