FBI releases newly declassified document related to 9/11 probe
Published on: Sunday, September 12, 2021
By: Bernama
The towers of the World Trade Center pour smoke shortly after being struck by hijacked commercial aircraft, September 11, 2001. - Reuters
WASHINGTON: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released the first document related to the investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and suspected Saudi government support for the hijackers.
“This material is being released in response to the executive order, signed Sept 3, 2021, (by US President Joe Biden) on the declassification review of certain documents concerning the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001,” Sputnik reported, quoting the FBI as saying on Saturday.
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The FBI electronic communication document, dated April 4, 2016, consists of over a dozen pages of witness testimony collected mainly during a November 2015 interview, regarding “significant logistic support” provided to two 9/11 hijackers, identified as Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Al-Midhar. The man who was interviewed had frequent contacts with Saudi nationals in the US and had links to the Saudi Arabian consulate in Los Angeles.
According to the document, the people who provided support to the first hijackers to arrive in the US before the 9/11 attacks include Omar Al Bayoumi and Fahad Al Thumairy. Bayoumi appears to have been more involved in providing “logistic support to Hazmi and Midhar including translation, travel assistance, lodging and financing.”
The hijackers are said to have encountered Bayoumi, who was thought to be a Saudi student, at a halal restaurant in southern California in 2000 and he helped them find an apartment in San Diego. Bayoumi is also said to have had contacts with Osama Bassnan, a man who allegedly knew the Bin Laden family and maintained communication with them.
The FBI document says that on Oct 17, 1992, Bassnan hosted a party in Washington DC for the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Towers bombing.
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Thumairy is said to have served as an administrative officer at the Saudi Consulate. According to FBI sources, he had extremist beliefs. He appears to have helped arrange meetings between Bayoumi and the two 9/11 hijackers.
The families of the 9/11 victims have long pushed the US government to declassify information related to the links Saudi Arabia may have had to the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks. Biden’s executive order requires the Attorney General to release the declassified 9/11 documents publicly over the next six months.
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The Saudi embassy in the US said on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia supports the declassification of documents related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The embassy emphasised that all allegations that Saudi Arabia is complicit in the Sept 11 attacks are false and said that over the course of the twenty years since the tragedy, no evidence has emerged to indicate that the kingdom’s government had any information about the planned attack or was in any way involved in its execution.
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