The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, also known as 9/11, were the worst such attacks in history. Twenty-five years on, they have been thoroughly investigated and analyzed — yet many people still believe the conspiracy theories that swirl around the suicide attacks in the United States.
First, a reminder of the event itself. On September 11, 2001, the Islamist terrorist network al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger planes. Two were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. A third crashed into the Pentagon, just outside Washington, D.C., the headquarters of the US Department of Defense. The fourth airliner is believed to have been heading for the Capitol in Washington, the seat of the US Congress, but it crashed in rural Pennsylvania after passengers staged an intervention to prevent the hijackers from reaching their target. The suicide attackers killed almost 3,000 people that day, and injured thousands more. Live footage of the attacks was broadcast all around the world.
September 11 was an event that changed the world — not only in terms of terrorism, but also conspiracy theories.
"September 11 was a trigger point that led to so many things: debates in society as a whole that hadn't happened before, security problems no one had had to deal with before," historian Claus Oberhauser explained in an interview with fact checkers from BR-Faktenfuchs.
