DALLAS, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- Investigators found an Arabic-language manual of religious rituals and prayers in the wreckage of United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania that might have been used by the hijackers to prepare for their mission, The Dallas Morning News reported Thursday.
Several pages offered detailed spiritual instructions for the terrorists to follow as they prepared themselves for a suicide mission, according to unidentified federal officials quoted by the newspaper. They said parts of the manual may be made public soon.
"There's great detail for steeling oneself: what to think about, what to pray ... at each stage," said one source who saw the handbook. "It takes them from the hotel to the taxi to the airport and into the airplane."
Another source described the manual as an "almost hypnotic, very religious, very prayerful" set of instructions. "Here is the state of mind you need to have ... This is how you need to connect yourself," the official said in describing the text.
Federal officials said two photocopies of the handbook were found in separate locations directly linked to some of the 19 hijackers who took over four airliners Sept. 11, sending two of them into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon. The fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.
One official confirmed one copy was found in the Pennsylvania wreckage but the location of the second copy was not disclosed, the News reported.
The followers of Osama bin Laden, who has been named as the prime suspect in the attacks, followed similar religious preparation before the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, according to testimony in the bombing trial last spring in New York.
