Manual disturbs Ashcroft

09/29/2001

From Staff Reports

Related content: Terrorist letters • 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 (Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

The spiritual and operational guide that helped airline hijackers carry out their Sept. 11 attacks has been found at three locations, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday.

He called the documents "a shocking and disturbing view into the mindsets" of the hijackers.

The guide – much of it written in the form of notes – quotes several passages from the Quran.

It outlines several steps of spiritual and physical preparation.

In one passage, the author urges: "Purify your heart from any impurity and forget things called life because the time of playing has gone and the time has come and we wasted most of our life ... it is time for us ... to take advantage of those hours to give the sacrifice and obedience."

One copy was discovered in the wreckage of the jet that crashed in rural Pennsylvania. Another was found in the belongings of a suspected hijacker on the first flight that crashed into the World Trade Center. A third was in a car rented by a suspected hijacker of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

One passage from the guide instructs the follower to pray when boarding the airplane and again upon taking a seat. "It is a raid for Allah," according to the FBI's translation of the guide.

Mr. Ashcroft called the guide's religious references "a stark reminder of how these hijackers grossly perverted the Islamic faith to justify their terroristic acts."

The guide's existence was first reported Thursday by The Dallas Morning News.