FOCUS Magazine | 

No. 48 (2001)

TERROR: Entry by lawsuit

▮ FOCUS correspondent Hubert Gude

Wednesday, November 13th, 2013, 12:01 p.m.

Mohamed Atta had won his place at University in Hamburg through a court order

Since September 11, Jens Leichsenring has had an unusual assignment. The administrative
officer searches for possible Islamic terrorists at the universities of applied sciences (FH) of the
Hanseatic City of Hamburg, always in close cooperation with the experts of the Federal
Criminal Police Office [German: Bundeskriminalamt or abbreviated ‘BKA’]. Leichsenring already
found what he was looking for twice: Terror pilot Ziad Jarrah and the fugitive Zakariya Essabar
studied at a university of applied sciences.

The university chief investigator landed another surprising hit last week: suicide bomber
Mohamed Atta, the alleged head of the Hamburg terror cell, was also registered as a FH
student for the Department of Architecture under the matriculation number 1 34 73 78. Until
now, the terrorist hunters from the BKA assumed that the Egyptian had only studied urban
planning at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg from October 1992 to March 2001.
And Leichsenring discovered something else: Atta had fought for a place at the FH before a
German court.

In June 1992, Atta applied in writing from Cairo to the University of Applied Sciences under the
name El-Amir – and received a rejection letter in August. The university's reasoning: The
architecture course is already overcrowded. Only four days later, Atta, also from Cairo, filed an
application for a temporary injunction with the Hamburg Administrative Court against the
cancellation – and was successful.

The Egyptian was allowed to study from September, promptly transferred the semester fee of
51 marks and entered Germany on a student visa. But only two months later, he de-
matriculated* and moved to the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. There, however, he
enrolled under the name Atta.

In the lecture halls of the University of Applied Sciences, Atta met the Indonesian Agus
Budiman, who had begun his studies in the field of architecture at the same time and possibly
also belonged to the Hamburg terror cell. In October 2000, the 31-year-old disappeared from
the Hanseatic city in the direction of the USA. The FBI arrested him in Washington last Monday.

His offense: Budiman had organized a fake driver's license for a suspected bin Laden confidant.
According to American media reports, the former architecture student, who had worked as a
driver for a fast-food restaurant in the United States, is also said to have served as a contact
man for his former fellow student Atta in the preparations for the attacks. ■
Archived copy [in original German] found at: https://archive.li/nhiCE
* The Bing machine translation provided here is, “he was ex-matriculated again”.