FBI declassifies first document on 9/11 probe
THE US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has declassified 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 on September 3, 2021 (by US President Joe Biden) on the declassification review of certain documents concerning the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,” the FBI said on Saturday.
The FBI electronic communication document, dated April 4, 2016, consists of more than a dozen pages of heavily redacted 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 restaurant in southern California in 2000. Bayoumi is also said to have had contacts with Osama Bassnan, a man who allegedly knew the Bin Laden family and communicated with them.
The FBI document says that on October 17, 1992, Bassnan hosted a party in Washington for the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Towers bombing.
Thumairy is said to have served as an administrative officer at the Saudi Consulate. He appears to have helped arrange meetings between Bayoumi and the two 9/11 hijackers. According to a 2017 court record by a former FBI official in LA, there was evidence of Bayoumi being an undercover agent.
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.