Letter aimed to banish doubts

"Remind yourself that in this night you will face many challenges. But you have to face them and understand it 100 per cent . . . Obey God, his messenger, and don't fight among yourself where you become weak, and stand fast; God will stand with those who stood fast." The exhortation to stand fast, with its suggestions for prayer and fasting, and the final practical deadly checklist, are probably the last things Mohammed Atta read before the hijacker boarded his flight on September 11th.

"Check all of your items - your bag, your clothes, knives, your will, your IDs, your passport, all your papers. Check your safety before you leave . . . Make sure that nobody is following you," the letter urges.

The five-page handwritten note in Arabic, recovered by the FBI from luggage that never made it on to the plane, provides a remarkable insight into the psychological preparation of Atta and his comrades in the final hours before their deaths.

Above all, perhaps, the letter, extracts from which were published in yesterday's Washington Post, reveal real doubt and the need for a final stiffening of resolve on that last night.

"You should pray, you should fast. You should ask God for guidance, you should ask God for help . . . Continue to pray throughout this night. Continue to recite the Koran," the letter says. "Purify your heart and clean it from all earthly matters. The time of fun and waste has gone. The time of judgment has arrived. Hence we need to utilise those few hours to ask God for forgiveness. You have to be convinced that those few hours that are left you in your life are very few.

"From there you will begin to live the happy life, the infinite paradise. Be optimistic. The prophet was always optimistic."

Atta (33), believed to be one of the key figures among the hijackers, and Abdulaziz Alomari spent the night of September 10th in Room 232 of the South Portland Comfort Inn in Portland, Maine. Early next morning they flew from Portland to Boston's Logan Airport, where they connected to American Airlines Flight 11, the plane that crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Centre.

Two other copies of the letter have also been recovered linked to other hijackers.

"Everybody hates death, fears death," Atta's correspondent tells him. But only those, the believers who know the life after death and the reward after death, would be the ones who will be seeking death.

"Remember the verse that if God supports you, no one will be able to defeat you . . . Keep a very open mind, keep a very open heart of what you are to face. You will be entering paradise. You will be entering the happiest life, everlasting life. Keep in your mind that if you are plagued with a problem and how to get out of it that a believer is always plagued with problems . . . You will never enter paradise if you have not had a major problem. But only those who stood fast through it are the ones who will overcome it."

The fifth page is headed simply "When you enter the plane" and contains words of prayer: "Oh, God, open all doors for me. Oh, God, who answers prayers and answers those who ask you, I am asking you for your help. I am asking you for forgiveness. I am asking you to lighten my way." And the letter ends chillingly: "There is no God but God, I being a sinner. We are of God, and to God we return."