- BERLIN (Reuters) - Two of
the hijackers who piloted the suicide airliner attacks on the United States
in September showed off an architectural model of Washington months beforehand,
a German magazine reported on Saturday.
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- Focus magazine said suspected ringleader Mohamed Atta
and Marwan Al-Shehhi, both of whom had lived in the northern Germany city
of Hamburg as students, appeared at a university architectural workshop
there with the model last summer.
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- "One time they came in with some Arab-looking students
who were carrying an two-foot seven-inch by seven-inch model and put it
on the carpenter's bench," said workshop head Thomas Kniephoff.
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- The students said the cardboard model showed Washington,
D.C., Kniephoff told Focus.
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- "Then I recognized the Pentagon with the surrounding
greenery and buildings," he added.
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- Atta, who studied architecture and drafted city plans
at a local office in Hamburg, and Al-Shehhi are believed to have piloted
the two planes that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York.
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- German investigators said this week that they have still
to investigate about a third of 20,000 leads into the attacks they received
since September.
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