Man who crashed aircraft into World Trade Centre alive - father

EGYPT: Mohammed Atta, who crashed one of the aircraft into the World Trade Centre last September, is alive and hiding in Egypt, his father said yesterday. Mohammed El-Amir Atta said the evidence connecting his son with the attacks was "manipulated"; the attacks were the work of a Christian terrorist group.

"I'm telling you, my son is alive. He left America on September 10th," said Mr Atta to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "He called me a day after the attack and we talked for two minutes about this and that. Neither of us knew about it." Mr Atta said his son, the youngest of three children and nicknamed "Bolbol", is in hiding near Cairo for fear of being murdered by the CIA.

Security camera stills showing his son checking into Portland airport on the morning of September 11th don't convince Mr Atta of his son's guilt.

"The man standing there behind my son, also allegedly an assassin, is called Abdulaziz Alomari and lives in Saudi Arabia," said Mr Atta. "At the time of the attacks he was in his office in Riad. He is alive as well and has hired a lawyer to file charges against the US." Mohammed Atta studied architecture and city development at the Technical University in Hamburg, where prosecutors discovered he had founded a terrorist cell.

His father, a 66-year-old lawyer who lives in Cairo, has left the piles of books and a prayer mat untouched in his son's bedroom.

On the wall, a gold-framed photograph shows a slightly younger Atta with the same cool gaze as in the passport photo that was flashed around the world. But it is not the face of a mass murderer, his father says.

"But I wouldn't make any accusations if a Palestinian crashed a plane into the Empire State Building tomorrow," said Mr Atta. "Every day they are being murdered and their homes destroyed."

The German government said yesterday it will not provide US investigators with evidence collected about a suspected co-conspirator of Atta, for fear it could help secure a death penalty conviction. "Our documents cannot be used for the death penalty," Justice Minister Ms Herta Daeubler-Gmelin said.

Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested while taking lessons at a flying school in Virginia, where he is currently awaiting trial. US investigators suspect he received money for the lessons from the Hamburg-based terrorist cell.