Consider the odds: two men named Mohamed Atta, total strangers with nothing to connect them, both arriving in Prague just as one, the Sept. 11 hijacker, was beginning his fateful journey to the United States. According to documents in the files of the German federal police, the improbable scenario of “The Two Attas” is precisely what transpired in the spring of 2000, confusing investigators for months and laying the groundwork for a spurious claim that Atta later met with an Iraqi intelligence agent. In the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, Czech and German investigators labored under the misimpression that Atta the hijacker had arrived in Prague on a flight from Germany at the end of May 2000, been sent back to Germany the same day for lack of a Czech visa, and then reappeared early June 2 with his papers in order. It turned out the Atta who arrived on May 31, 2000, was a Pakistani businessman. The one who arrived later was the Sept. 11 hijacker. The mistaken notion that Atta–if he had come twice to Prague–must have had some urgent business there before his June 2000 departure for the U.S. set the stage for the Czech government’s insistence, which proved groundless, that Atta returned to Prague the following year to meet an Iraqi intelligence officer. Full Story
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