Hamburg Cell Member and Pakistani Air Force Pilot Atif bin Mansour

[Kevin Fenton]

To my surprise, I checked and it seems he’s still alive. And I thought he died when he crashed his plane into the Pentagon, silly me.

First a bit of history:
The “Hamburg cell” contained a member called Atif bin Mansour.
“Al-Shehhi failed his language exams and went back to Bonn. Soon afterwards, a man named Atif bin Mansour arrived in Hamburg. He was a co-applicant with Atta for a room at the Islamic study group at the technical university.”
“When Mansour's brother, a member of the Pakistani armed forces, died in combat in 1999, Mansour went back to Pakistan for good.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_of_the_September_11%2C_2001_attacks

Paul Thompson says:
“Late 1998-August 10, 1999
"Pakistani Air Force Pilot Temporarily Replaces Alshehhi as Atta's Roommate"
Hijacker Marwan Alshehhi moved to Bonn… Just as he left town, a Pakistani student named Atif bin Mansour arrives in Hamburg, and begins living and studying together with Mohammed Atta. Early in 1999, Mansour applies with Mohamed Atta for a room to hold a new Islamic study group. Mansour is a pilot on leave from the Pakistani Air Force. As the Los Angeles Times puts it, "This in itself is intriguing--a Pakistani pilot? Investigators acknowledge they haven't figured out Mansour's role in the plot, if any." On this day, Mansour's brother, also in the Pakistani armed forces, is killed when his surveillance plane is shot down by India. Mansour returns home and supposedly never comes back to Germany. Soon afterwards, Alshehhi returns to Hamburg. (Los Angeles Times, 9/1/02) In March 2001, Mohamed Atta applies together with a Pakistani Air Force pilot for a security job with Lufthansa Airlines. This pilot is a member of the same Islamic study group as Mansour, but it's not clear if this is Mansour and he did come back to or stay in Germany, or if Atta was associating with a second Pakistani Air Force pilot. (Newsday, 1/24/02; Network of Terror, 11/01) The FBI later notes that Alshehhi arrived "almost as a replacement" for Mansour. After 9/11, the FBI asks Pakistan if the flight lieutenant and squad leader Mansour can be found and questioned about any possible role he may have had in the 9/11 plot, but there's no indication Pakistan as to whether has ever agreed to this request. (Rediff, 7/17/02) In late 2002, the German Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigations will say that Mansour remains "a very interesting figure." (Los Angeles Times, 9/1/02)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x42650

Contrary to some speculation (for which I am partly responsible) It seems that Mansour did go to Pakistan, didn’t go back to Germany and was alive after 9/11.

A Pakistani journalist investigating his connection to the Hamburg cell spoke to him for an article dated 17 July 2002:
“Sqdn Ldr Atif, however, had no idea about the FBI investigation. Contacted on his mobile phone, the soft-spoken officer denied having had anything to do with Atta or his terrorist network. "I am a responsible officer of the Pakistan Air Force," Atif said, "and won't be able to speak further on such a sensitive issue. You will have to come through my organisation."”
http://www.rediff.com/us/2002/jul/17ny.htm
Obviously, the journalist could have been lying or set up, but I doubt it in this case.

Also it seems that a person named Ahmad bin Mansoor (Ahmad was his second name) passed a mechanical engineering examination at the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore in November-December 2002.
http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:rGV3AgvM-R8J:uet.edu.pk/exam/01Mech4.doc+Atif+bin+Mansoor&hl=en&client=firefox-a
Further, Ahmad bin Mansoor passed an examination in mechatronics engineering at the same university in May-June 2003.
http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:actH4X9d9jYJ:uet.edu.pk/exam/01Mech5.doc+Atif+bin+Mansoor&hl=en&client=firefox-a
After returning to Pakistan, Mansour was finally posted to Lahore air force base and he met Atta when studying engineering at the Hamburg-Harburg technical university, where he was an excellent student an even won a prize of DM 1,500 in honour of good test achievements, so the guy studying at Lahore seems to be a good match.

However, I have 5 howevers
(1) AFAIK and amazingly, he still hasn’t been questioned by the FBI (at least there is no report of it).
(2) Get a load of this from his brother’s obituary:
“The young man was full of ambitions. He decided to join Pakistan Air Force as a pilot, but later opted to join Pakistan Navy. His decision was based on his two wishes: to visit the different far-flung lands and his strong desire to embrace martyrdom. From his childhood, he was fascinated with the historic stories narrated by his grandfather, Malik Mohammad Nasib, a retired Police official. The journey full of scarifies which his family took from India to free Pakistan. In Islamic practices, there is no death better than martyrdom. Though not very religious, his utmost desire was to die for a cause, to be buried in national flag. In his first letter from Junior Cadet College, PNS Rahnuma to his sister (that too in 1989, ten years before his martyrdom), he wrote that he would like to die for a cause, his country.”
http://zararshaheedtrust.org/incident/inside/zarar.html
What a family!
(3) When asked about what happened to Mansour when he returned to Pakistan from Germany, his father said, “Atif was detained because he had not sought permission from the authorities before returning home to attend his younger brother's funeral. He, however, was set free after a relative, a brigadier in the army, intervened and prevailed upon the higher-ups. Atif was posted at the Chaklala air base in Rawalpindi, but was soon transferred to Lahore, courtesy efforts by the then deputy chief of air staff, Air Marshal Aliuddin.”
http://www.rediff.com/us/2002/jul/17ny.htm
This is astonishing. He was detained for going to the funeral of his brother, who was a national hero and Islamic martyr. Sounds rum to me. Maybe he was detained for another reason, such as (pure speculation) consorting with known extremists.
(4) According to the Pakistani Defense site http://www.pakistanidefence.com/PakAirForce/PAF_Air_Bases.html, the base in Lahore to which he was finally assigned and where he seems to have studied at university is only a forward base which becomes fully operational in wartime. No squadrons are assigned to it.
According to the site for 3 August 2002 (obtained through the Wayback machine), Chaklala air base in Rawalpindi has three squadrons:
“Squadron No 6 at PAF Base Chaklala equipped with C-130 aircraft.
Squadron No 41 at PAF Base Chaklala equipped with Cessna 172, Aero-Commander, Beach Travel aircraft.
Squadron No 12 at PAF Base Chaklala equipped with Boeing 707, Falcon, Fokker aircraft.”
The Boeing 707 kind of leaps out at you, doesn’t it. Apparently the PAF had five of them.
(5) There’s always the other Pakistani Air Force pilot who was a member of the Hamburg cell, maybe he flew American 77 into the Pentagon.

[paulthompson]

1. That's some good research

I should update my entries on him to point out that A) he was contacted by phone after 9/11 and B) the martyr wish stuff.

I would postulate however, that it may well be he's dead. If there was some kind of elaborate ruse to disguise his role in the plot before 9/11, then that would naturally have continued afterwards. If he was in on the plot, I think the Pakistani gvmt would pretty much have to be obliged to say he's still alive and carry on that pretense (which wouldn't be tough, as the US doesn't seem to care about these things).

I don't find the location of someone with a similar name studying to mean much. That kind of name is probably a dime a dozen. Look at all the false Mohamed Atta leads there were, for instance (I haven't put it in my timeline, but for instance there was a Mohamed Atta living in Texas the FBi investigated, another Atta who was a tourist passing through NYC, and so on).

I'm confused about you point 5.

[Kevin Fenton]

3. Lahore

If there was a ruse to disguise his role, then surely it should have been perpetrated by AQ, not the Pakistani government, although the Pak govt. would clearly have an interest in picking this up and continuing it. How many articles actually mention AbM? The Amir Mir article is almost the only one that draws attention to him - he's ignored almost universally. Surely it would be better for the Pakistanis just to hush the whole thing up, rather than draw attention to it by planting a story he's still alive (although Mir only spoke to him once briefly by phone, there doesn't seem to have been any face-to-face meeting). He spoke to his dad too and his dad also said he was alive. Surely it would be easier for the Pakistanis to say he had been killed elsewhere (accident, by the Indians, whatever). The paper Mir works for, the Weekly Independent, is based in Lahore and should be read by the people there. If he wrote an article saying that AbM was alive, but he wasn't, then surely somebody there would notice.

The student doesn't just have a similar name, he's studying the same subject as AbM was in Hamburg (enginnering) and is in the the same city AbM was posted too. btw, the Lahore university is supposed to be a hotbed of Islamic radicalism.

The other PAF pilot is this one:
February 15, 2001
"Atta and Pakistani Fighter Pilot Associate Denied Airplane Security Job Because of Criminal Record"
According to a book by Jurgen Roth, described by Newsday as "one of Germany's top investigative reporters," on this day Mohamed Atta applies for a job with Lufthansa Airlines at the Frankfurt, Germany, airport.

At the very least, this shows links between the Hamburg cell and a cadre of trained, radical pilots.

If you ask me, when AbM went back to Pakistan for his brother's funeral he made some obvious contacts with radical elements at home, a superior, non-radical officer got wind of this and that's why he was thrown in jail. They let him out when he promised to be a good boy and not go back to Germany.

His brother was killed on 10 August 1999, but this seems to be a strange time for a student to go home, as his studies should have finished for the academic year in June. It seems he was hanging around waiting for the next academic year to start, so why didn't he go back after the funeral? I would guess it had something to do with his arrest.

I think that if his detention were counted as an arrest, then he wouldn't have got a US visa anyway.

[paulthompson]

4. Mansour

He was mentioned in a few other places, including a prominent LA Times article, so I don't think he would have been hushed up had it not been for that one article. The LA Times article got their info from inside sources in the 9/11 investigation, so they were onto him, but couldn't quite figure things out. The German investigators too, call him "a very interesting figure."

I still think there was some kind of ruse perpetrated here. Perhaps, for instance, the martyr-loving Mansour swapped indentities with someone else. If the ISI was in on the plot (as I believe they were), they would want to cover up the involvement of any Pakistani fighter pilot, and perpetrating such a ruse would be easy for them. Note also the allegations that even the head of the Pakistani Air Force was in on the plot. Recall that polls have suggested up to 90% of the Pakistani populace supports bin Laden. Odds are, Mansour's family would have been supportive of his planned martyrdom. I suspect most Saudi 9/11 hijackers had similarily supportive families, which is one reason why we never hear anything about them or their families.

Recall this from the LA Times article:

"Mansour rushed home to be with his family and never came back. Not long after, Al-Shehhi returned to Hamburg. It is as if they replaced one another."

Curious.

Further, the guy applying for a job with Lufthansa wasn't just a Pakistani fighter pilot, he was also said to be in Atta's study group at school, as Mansour was. What are the odds of TWO Pakistani fighter pilots both going to that school, both in on the plot, without anyone apparently noticing that this small study group had two such people? I suggest that, while that could be, it's more likely that this is once again Mansour, back in Germany in early 2001 but with a new identity.

[Kevin Fenton]

5. Dead or alive?

"He was mentioned in a few other places, including a prominent LA Times article, so I don't think he would have been hushed up had it not been for that one article."
Very true. Nevertheless, it's one of the few articles that does mention him.

"I still think there was some kind of ruse perpetrated here."
Normally, you would expect the teams for the various planes to be kept separate, but AQ didn't and this is viewed as poor operational security. Perhaps they just kept the pilots separate from the muscle, because the muscle was expendable and the pilots weren't. Perhaps this is why the muscle almost seem to want to call attention to themselves - to deflect attention from the real pilots. Vis-a-vis hijacking aircraft and crashing them into buildings the 19 named hijackers are incapable.

You seem to have misunderstood me regarding his brother's obit. The quote about longing for martyrdom refers to his brother, not AbM himself, perhaps I should have made that clearer.

"If the ISI was in on the plot (as I believe they were),"
I'm not sure I'd say the ISI was in on the plot in the sense of it being an official ISI operation, although it seems that some ISI officers participated in various ways.

"Note also the allegations that even the head of the Pakistani Air Force was in on the plot."
Do you have a link for this please?

"I suspect most Saudi 9/11 hijackers had similarily supportive families, which is one reason why we never hear anything about them or their families."
Yes, also I think there was some initial problem issuing visas to journalists who wanted to go to Saudi to talk to the families. When the problem cleared up, the journos weren't that bothered anymore.

Don't know about two PAF pilots at the same university being funny. At my faculty at university there were loads of Israelis and all of them had obviously done military service (surely there is conscription in Pakistan?). I looked for special links between Hamburg-Harburg and students from the Middle East, but I didn't find much (I was looking for a special PAF programme which sent its people there - you know how lots of people join the military to go to college - but I didn't find one). They need lots of pilots anyway (at least 4). My impression is that HH significantly cooled on Muslims after 9/11.

This just occurred to me:
Everybody and his dog (even the 9/11 Commission) suspects that there was some link between the Hamburg cell and AQ before Atta and co. went to Afghanistan to train at the camps. Maybe this is it. Somebody was sent to Europe to recruit the "lead hijackers" and bring them back for a spot of training. This is why KSM and ObL entrusted them with such an important mission after such a short time - they were looking for certain types (ones that could live in the west) and recognised them when they saw them.

btw. Do you know which unit Al Shehhi was attached to in the UAE?

[paulthompson]

7. response

>Normally, you would expect the teams for the various planes to be kept separate, but AQ didn't and this is viewed as poor operational security. Perhaps they just kept the pilots separate from the muscle, because the muscle was expendable and the pilots weren't.

Pilots and muscle weren't kept separate at all. For instance, Hanjour lived with the "muscle" for most of 2001.

>You seem to have misunderstood me regarding his brother's obit. The quote about longing for martyrdom refers to his brother, not AbM himself, perhaps I should have made that clearer.

Ah, okay.

>Do you have a link for this please?

June 1996: Bin Laden Meets with Pakistani Military Leaders

Controversial author Gerald Posner claims bin Laden and al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida meet with senior members of Pakistan's military, including Mushaf Ali Mir, who becomes chief of Pakistan's air force in 2000. Bin Laden had moved to Afghanistan the month before, and the Pakistanis offer bin Laden protection if he allies with the Taliban. The alliance proves successful, and bin Laden calls it “blessed by the Saudis,” who are already giving money to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Perhaps not coincidentally, this meeting comes only one month after a deal is reportedly made that reaffirms Saudi support for al-Qaeda. Bin Laden is initially based in Jalalabad, which is free of Taliban control, but after the deal he moves his base to Kandahar, which is the center of Taliban power.

July 22, 2002-February 20, 2003: Saudi Princes and Pakistani General Later Implicated in 9/11 Plot Die Mysteriously

Three prominent members of the Saudi royal family die in mysterious circumstances. Prince Ahmed bin Salman, a nephew of the Saudi king, prominent businessman, and owner of the winning 2002 Kentucky Derby horse, is said to die of a heart attack at the age of 43. The next day, Prince Sultan bin Faisal, another nephew of the king, dies driving to Prince Ahmed's funeral. A week later, Prince Fahd bin Turki supposedly “dies of thirst” in the Arabian desert. Seven months later, on February 20, 2003, Pakistan's air force chief, Mushaf Ali Mir, dies in a plane crash in clear weather, along with his wife and closest confidants. Controversial author Gerald Posner implies that all of these events are linked together and the deaths are not accidental, but have occurred because of the testimony of captured al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida in March 2002 (see March 31, 2002). The deaths all occurred not long after the respective governments were told of Zubaida's confessions. Only one other key figure named by Zubaida remains alive: Saudi Intelligence Minister Prince Turki al-Faisal. Posner says, “He's the J. Edgar Hoover of Saudi Arabia,” too powerful and aware of too many secrets to be killed off. Prince Turki lost his intelligence minister job ten days before 9/11, and is later made Saudi ambassador to Britain, giving him diplomatic immunity from any criminal prosecution.

>Yes, also I think there was some initial problem issuing visas to journalists who wanted to go to Saudi to talk to the families. When the problem cleared up, the journos weren't that bothered anymore.

Do you have any source info on that? My impression is that there has always been a severe restriction on this, except for a few relatives carefully coached about what they'd say.

>Don't know about two PAF pilots at the same university being funny. At my faculty at university there were loads of Israelis and all of them had obviously done military service (surely there is conscription in Pakistan?). I looked for special links between Hamburg-Harburg and students from the Middle East, but I didn't find much (I was looking for a special PAF programme which sent its people there - you know how lots of people join the military to go to college - but I didn't find one). They need lots of pilots anyway (at least 4). My impression is that HH significantly cooled on Muslims after 9/11.

Even if there's lots of Pakistanis at the college, only a small percent would be fighter pilots, and out of that only a small percent would be a friend of Atta, and attending the same study group.

>Everybody and his dog (even the 9/11 Commission) suspects that there was some link between the Hamburg cell and AQ before Atta and co. went to Afghanistan to train at the camps. Maybe this is it. Somebody was sent to Europe to recruit the "lead hijackers" and bring them back for a spot of training. This is why KSM and ObL entrusted them with such an important mission after such a short time - they were looking for certain types (ones that could live in the west) and recognised them when they saw them.

There's no shortage of such connections from very early on. check out my chapter on Al-Qaeda in Germany.

>btw. Do you know which unit Al Shehhi was attached to in the UAE?

No. I don't have anything on that in the timeline. If you can dig something up on that, I'll add it in.

[Kevin Fenton]

6. Pakistanis at TUHH

There are so many Pakistanis at Hamburg Harburg that they have there own student association. The website isn't working now, but you can find a year-old version using the Wayback machine here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041109075835/www.tu-harburg.de/psa/main.html

[paulthompson]

2. by the way...

Kevin, I have something about this I'd like to mention in a private email. Please email me at paulthompson22b @ yahoo.com (delete the spaces).