The FBI has unveiled the first piece of evidence it has to link the hijackers who launched four suicide attacks on America 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".
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"You will be entering the happiest life, everlasting life," the note is reported to say.
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.
US Attorney General John Ashcroft said last night 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. The paper detailed how it gave a step-by-step guide to the terrorists' actions in the run-up to the hijacking.
"Everybody hates death, fears death," the letter 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."
And it told them what to do as the plane was about to smash into its target, saying: "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'."
PA