The September 11 attacks were carried out by 19 men affiliated with al-Qaeda, a jihadist organization based in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The hijackers hailed from four countries: 15 were citizens of Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Egypt, and one from Lebanon. To execute the attacks, the hijackers were organized into four teams, each led by a pilot-trained hijacker who would commandeer the flight with three or four "muscle hijackers" trained to help subdue the pilots, passengers, and crew. Each team was assigned to a different flight and given a unique target to crash their respective planes into. The first hijackers to arrive in the United States were Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who settled in San Diego County, California, in January 2000. They were followed by three hijacker-pilots from the Hamburg cell—Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah—who arrived in mid-2000 to undertake flight training at Huffman Aviation flight-training school in Venice, Florida. The fourth hijacker-pilot, Hani Hanjour, who was not a member of the Hamburg cell, arrived subsequently. Mohamed Atta was designated as the assigned ringleader over all four groups, coordinating the overall operation.
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