Saudi official linked to 9/11 identified

Jarrah was assigned to Saudi Arabia’s embassy from 1999 to 2000 in Washington DC, and the US authorities believe that he oversaw assistance given to two al-qaeda terrorists as they settled in the US before the attack.

The two al-qaeda members: Khalid al-mihdhar and Nawaf alhazmi, went on to hijack an American Airlines plane and kill 125 people after crashing into the Pentagon building.

It is the first time that the FBI has publicly confirmed, albeit by accident, that they suspected a link between the Saudi embassy in Washington and the September 11 hijackers.

The court document was filed by Jill Sanborn, the assistant director of the FBI’S counterterrorism division, and was alluding to findings in a heavily redacted FBI report when it mentioned Jarrah.

The 2012 report identified two other Saudi men: Fahad althumairy and Omar al-bayoumi, who were suspected of assisting the hijackers, but it did not name Jarrah, who the FBI suspects was the ‘‘third man’’ involved.

US investigators believed that Bayoumi was a Saudi intelligence agent – though Saudi Arabia denies this – and that he helped the two al Qaeda terrorists find an apartment upon their arrival in the United States.

The disclosure has been welcomed by the families of September 11 attack victims and may strengthen their legal case.

‘‘This shows there is a complete government cover-up of the Saudi involvement,’’ a spokesman for the victims’ families, Brett Eagleson, told Yahoo News, which first broke the story.

Saudi Arabia has vehemently denied any role or complicity in the September 11 attacks.

According to Yahoo News, the FBI’S declaration has now been removed from the court filing as it was made in error.

Michael Isikoff, the chief investigative journalist at Yahoo News, who was the first to notice the apparent mistake, told Al Jazeera he knew right away the disclosure was ‘‘a slip-up’’.

‘‘In fact, both Attorney General William Barr and the Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell had filed motions with the court saying that any information relating to the Saudi embassy official and all internal FBI documents about this matter were so sensitive that they were state secrets, that means if revealed they could cause damage to the national security.’’ – Telegraph Group