FBI unviels 'highjacker link' instructions

The FBI tonight unveiled the first piece of evidence it has to link the hijackers who launched four suicide attacks on America on September 11 to each other.

The evidence came in a five-page series of instructions to the hijackers which told them to bring ‘‘knives, your will, IDs, your passport’’ and added: ‘‘You will be entering the happiest life, everlasting life.’’

The letter was found in the baggage of suspected ringleader Mohamed Atta, in a car rented by another hijacker, Hawaf Alhazmi, and at the site in Pennsylvania where one of the hijacked planes crashed.

American Attorney General John Ashcroft said the documents left behind by the terrorists were ‘‘a shocking and disturbing view into the mindsets’’ of the hijackers.

He released the document, which was handwritten in Arabic, and said it was ‘‘a stark reminder of how these hijackers grossly perverted the Islamic faith to justify their terroristic acts’’.

Atta was on the first of the two flights that smashed into the World Trade Centre, while Alhazmi helped hijack the plane that flew into the Pentagon. It is not known who had been in possession of the text found in Pennsylvania.

The document was published by the Washington Post today. The paper detailed how it gave a step-by-step guide to the terrorists’ actions in the run-up to the hijacking.

It urged them to smile at taxi drivers, ‘‘crave death’’ and ‘‘make sure no one is following you’’.

‘‘Everybody hates death, fears death,’’ it said.

‘‘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.’’

As they set foot on the plane, the hijackers were to pray and remember: ‘‘It is a raid for Allah.’’

And it told them what to do as the plane was about to smash into its target, hinting at the final words said by the 19 hijackers as they killed more than 6,000 people.

It said: ‘‘When the time of truth comes and zero hour arrives, then straighten out your clothes, open your chest and welcome death for the sake of Allah.

‘‘Seconds before the target, your last words should be ‘There is no God but Allah. Mohammed is his messenger’.’’