Terror suspect's farewell to love: 'Be very proud'

FRANKFURT, Germany — U.S. investigators have discovered a farewell letter in which suspected suicide hijacker Ziad Jarrah expressed conflicting thoughts and murky motives for his apparent role in the Sept. 11 attacks, Der Spiegel magazine reported yesterday.

German Federal Prosecutors' Office spokesman Frauke-Katarin Scheuten described the letter as a love letter bidding his girlfriend farewell and said the package also contained papers about Jarrah's flight training.

"I have done what I had to do," Der Spiegel quoted from the four-page letter written by Jarrah and dated Sept. 10.

"You should be very proud because this is an honor and in the end will bring happiness to everyone."

The letter was sent to Jarrah's German-born Turkish girlfriend, Aysel Senguen, in the Ruhr River city of Bochum but was returned to the U.S. sender and recently obtained by FBI agents, the magazine reported.

It was not clear from the article or from Scheuten's comments whether Senguen has seen the letter. Neither are Senguen's whereabouts known; she has been living in a witness-protection program since the attacks.

A family friend has described Senguen as shocked and devastated by the events of Sept. 11 and by reports that her boyfriend of five years is believed to have had a leading role.

Jarrah, who FBI agents suspect helped hijack and pilot the United Airlines jet that crashed in rural Pennsylvania, had kept in close contact with Senguen throughout his yearlong U.S. residence in Florida, where he earned a private pilot's license and instrument-flight rating.

Senguen's friend Mahmoud Ali said Jarrah called her an hour or two before the hijackings but she detected nothing unusual in their last conversation.

The farewell letter, in which Jarrah reportedly tells Senguen he will not be returning to Germany, nevertheless hints at a future meeting, as Jarrah tells her to "hold on to what you have until we see each other again," Der Spiegel reported.

Jarrah, who like two other suspected suicide hijackers lived in Hamburg before leaving for U.S. flight training, came to investigators' attention when Senguen reported him missing two days after the attacks.

The 26-year-old Lebanese native often visited Senguen in Bochum, where she was studying medicine. But he lived and studied in Hamburg with two other suspected hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi.

The three are thought to have been the organizers of the attacks and pilots of three of the four planes used to carry out the attacks.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.