Among the 19 hijackers identified so far by the FBI is a Lebanese man, Ziad Samir Jarrah, who is said to have been on board hijacked flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania. Although his family have not heard from him in over a week, they dismiss outright any suggestions that he was involved. “If he’s not a religious person, then he couldn’t be in any way a religious terrorist,” says his uncle, Jamal Jarrah. Indeed the portrait he paints of his nephew is a far cry from the normal perception of a typical terrorist; coming from a well-off, middle–class family who held relatively liberal beliefs, he does not appear to fit the profile of a religious fanatic.

The evidence is nonetheless weighted against Jarrah. Although his uncle protests that press reports claiming Jarrah had spent time in Afghanistan were made up, there is evidence that he studied aviation at a university in Hamburg, and later enrolled at a flight school in Miami. And, according to Sarid Khazen from the American University in Beirut, these people are not your classic terrorists: “They come from well off families. We’re not talking about destitute poor individuals.” As proof of Jarrah’s involvement gets more compelling by the day, it is not just his family, but people all around the world, who are struggling to understand why.

Produced by ABC Australia