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An American flag is displayed at the Pentagon in Washington, Saturday, September 11, 2021, at sunrise on the morning of the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. (AP Photo / Alex Brandon)
WASHINGTON (AP) – A declassified FBI document relating to logistical support to two of the Saudi hijackers in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks details the contacts the men had with Saudi associates in the United States, but does not provide evidence that senior officials of the kingdom were complicit in the plot.
The document released on Saturday, marking the 20th anniversary of the attacks, is the first investigative record to come out since President Joe Biden ordered a declassification review of documents that for years have remained out of sight public. The 16-page document is a summary of a 2015 FBI interview with a man who had frequent contact with Saudi nationals in the United States who supported the first hijackers to arrive in the country before the attacks .
Biden has ordered the Justice Department and other agencies to conduct a declassification review and release the documents they can over the next six months. He was under pressure from the families of the victims, who had long sought the cases as they pursued a trial in New York City alleging Saudi government officials backed the hijackers.
The heavily blackened document was released hours after Biden attended the 9/11 commemorative events in New York City, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon. Relatives of the victims had said they would oppose Biden’s presence at the commemorations as long as the documents remained classified.
The Saudi government has long denied any involvement in the attacks. The Saudi Embassy in Washington has supported the complete declassification of all records as a way to “end once and for all the baseless allegations against the Kingdom.” The embassy said any claim that Saudi Arabia was complicit was “categorically false”.
The documents came out at a politically sensitive time for the United States and Saudi Arabia, which forged a strategic, albeit difficult, alliance, particularly on counterterrorism issues. The Biden administration published an intelligence assessment in February implicating Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the 2018 murder of US journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but drew criticism from Democrats for avoiding direct punishment from the royal himself.
Relatives of the victims said the release of the document was an important step in their efforts to link the attacks to Saudi Arabia. Brett Eagleson, whose father, Bruce, was killed in the World Trade Center attack, said the release of the FBI material “is accelerating our search for truth and justice.”
Jim Kreindler, an attorney for relatives of the victims, said in a statement that “the findings and conclusions of this FBI investigation validate the arguments we have made in the litigation regarding the responsibility of the Saudi government in the 9/11 attacks.
“This document, along with the public evidence gathered to date, provides a diagram of how (al-Qaida) operated inside the United States with the active and conscious support of the Saudi government,” he said. -he declares.
This includes, he said, Saudi officials exchanging phone calls with each other and Al-Qaida operatives, then having “accidental meetings” with the hijackers while providing them with assistance in s ” set up and find flight schools.
Regarding September 11, there has been speculation about an official involvement since shortly after the attacks, it was revealed that 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudis. Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida at the time, came from a prominent family in the kingdom.
The United States has been investigating some Saudi diplomats and others with Saudi government ties who knew of the hijackers after they arrived in the United States, according to previously declassified documents.
Yet the Commission’s report on September 11 in 2004 found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” the attacks orchestrated by al-Qaida, although it noted that charities linked to Saudi Arabia could have diverted money to the group. .
Particular review focused on the first two hijackers to arrive in the United States, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, and the support they received.
In February 2000, shortly after arriving in Southern California, they met at a halal restaurant a Saudi national named Omar al-Bayoumi who helped them find and rent an apartment in San Diego. He had ties to the Saudi government and had previously attracted the attention of the FBI.
Bayoumi described his meeting at the restaurant with Hazmi and Mihdhar as a “chance encounter,” and the FBI, during his interview, made several attempts to verify whether this characterization was correct or whether the meeting had been arranged in advance. , according to the document.
The 2015 interview that forms the basis of the FBI document was that of a man who applied for US citizenship and who, years earlier, had had repeated contact with Saudi nationals, which investigators said provided “significant logistical support” to several of the hijackers. Among the man’s contacts was Bayoumi, according to the document.
The man’s identity is obscured throughout the document, but he is described as having worked at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles.
The document also refers to Fahad al-Thumairy, at the time a diplomat accredited to the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles who, according to investigators, led an extremist faction in his mosque. The document says the communications analysis identified a seven-minute phone call in 1999 from Thumairy’s phone to the Saudi family of two brothers who were later detained at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
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