A German man said on Friday he was shocked to learn that a former university friend was believed to have been among suicide hijackers of a plane that smashed into the World Trade Center this week.
Mohammed Atta, 33, reportedly an Egyptian, is believed to have been at the controls of the first plane to hit the Trade Center on Tuesday.
"I was shocked to see Mohammed's picture on the news. He seemed like such a nice guy," 31-year-old Martin Ebert, who now lives in Norway, said. He said he had contacted the Norwegian intelligence service.
Ebert said he often had breakfast with Atta before classes at Hamburg's Technical University, where they both attended a course in city planning until 1997.
Almost 5,000 people remained unaccounted for on Friday after two hijacked planes destroyed the Center's twin towers.
Another plane crashed into the Pentagon near Washington and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania after an apparent struggle between passengers and hijackers.
Atta is believed to have belonged to a Hamburg-based extremist group thought to be linked with Saudi-born exiled dissident Osama bin Laden.
"Mohammed was never extreme in any way. He always spoke with a soft voice. He was polite, reserved and correct," Ebert said. "From the beginning to the end, this whole ordeal is completely unreal to me."
Ebert said Atta, who is believed to have been enrolled at the university for eight years, seldom spoke about politics and never expressed militant opinions.
"He was very interested in issues relating to development in developing countries. Other than that, he never initiated political discussions," Ebert said.
"He was also very committed to the studies and once organized a student trip to Aleppo in Syria."
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Democracies must remain united in the face of a shifting geopolitical landscape, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, while emphasizing the importance of Taiwan’s security to the world. “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism,” Tsai said at the annual forum in the Danish capital. Noting a “new geopolitical landscape” in which global trade and security face “uncertainty and unpredictability,” Tsai said that democracies must remain united and be more committed to building up resilience together in the face of challenges. Resilience “allows us to absorb shocks, adapt under
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
RSS