Make sure that you are clean, your clothes are clean, including your shoes.”These words were never intended for a wide audience. If all had gone according to plan, the documents would have been burnt up in the devastation unleashed by the impact of the hijacked planes on their targets. One, however, was recovered from the wreckage of United Airlines flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania. And the other was found in a bag that should have been transferred at Boston airport on to American Airlines flight 11 – which ploughed into the north tower of the World Trade Centre – but never made the connection.The bag belonged to Mohamed Atta, who has emerged as a crucial figure in the conspiracy and the only one of the 19 named suspects known to have had contact with all four hijacking crews.

It is not known what else investigators have found in the bag, which was checked in at Portland, Maine, early on 11 September where Atta and one fellow hijacker, named as Abdulaziz Alomari, had spent the previous night.It is also not known whether the five-page document found in the bag was written by Atta himself or by someone else. Nevertheless, it makes for compelling reading, explicitly addressing such issues as the hijackers’ fear of death and what they should do to get through what they knew to be their last night on earth.”Purify your heart and clean it from all earthly matters The time of fun and waste has gone The time of judgement has arrived. Hence we need to utilise those few hours to ask God for forgiveness,” said the document, extracts of which were published in yesterday’s Washington Post. “You have to be convinced that those few hours 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.”The document urged the hijackers to pray, fast and recite the Koran so that fear of death would recede: “Everybody hates death, fears death. 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.” Such rituals were to be followed in the morning, too: “Try to pray the morning prayer with an open heart. Don’t leave but when you have washed for the prayer.”The last page of Atta’s document was written on different paper and included a doodle of a small sword with circles and serpentine swirls drawn around its shaft, according to The Washington Post This page listed prayers to be said on the plane itself. When the hijackers stepped on board, they were to say: “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.