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United States Federal Bureau of Investigation made public the first document from classified materials related to the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. The document was declassified by decree of the President of the United States Joe Biden.
The 16-page document is dated April 4, 2016, and is reproduced in large denominations. It contains details of how the FBI investigated the involvement of a Saudi Arabian consulate officer in Los Angeles and an alleged Saudi intelligence agent in the attack. They provided logistical support to at least two aircraft hijackers, transfers CNN.
The document contains witness statements and other information regarding Saudi Arabian citizen Omar al-Bayumi. According to American intelligence services, he was associated with the intelligence of this Arab state.
The report says that al-Bayumi helped the two terrorists “with travel, housing and funding.” The name featured in a private part of the official report on the attacks, submitted in December 2002 by the intelligence committees of the Senate and House of Representatives.
Al-Bayumi himself admitted that he had contacted the future perpetrators of the terrorist attack in a restaurant, but called that meeting “accidental.”
The name of the employee of the Saudi Arabian consulate has been erased from the document.
The text also mentions Fahad al-Sumayri, then an accredited diplomat at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Los Angeles, who, according to investigators, led an extremist Muslim cell. They gathered at the mosque. In 1999, Sumayri called the home phone of two brothers from Saudi Arabia, who, according to American intelligence services, became terrorists and later ended up in Guantanamo prison in Cuba. Both al-Bayumi and al-Sumayri left the United States a few weeks before the September 11, 2001 attack, transfers Associated Press.
The material released by the FBI also contains a retelling of the interrogation of a man who had frequent contact with Saudi Arabians in the United States who supported terrorists. This interrogation took place in 2015.
There is no direct evidence in the document that the Saudi authorities were involved in the attack. The Saudi embassy in Washington had previously approved a complete declassification of all documents to “put an end once and for all to unfounded accusations against the kingdom.”
Meanwhile, lawyer for relatives of the 9/11 victims, Jim Kreindler, believes that “the findings of the FBI investigation confirm the involvement of the Saudi Arabian government” in this crime.
“This document, together with the evidence gathered to date in a public inquiry, provides a picture of how (al-Qaeda) acted in the United States with the active support of the Saudi government,” he said.
Joe Biden signed a declassification order on September 3. He explained that in this way he fulfills his election promise, writes RBC. The documents were demanded by the relatives of the victims of the terrorist attacks, as well as those who survived and participated in the rescue of people. About 1.6 thousand people sent a letter to the American president with a corresponding request. They believed that the materials contained information that would prove the involvement of the leadership of Saudi Arabia in the attacks.
In early August, relatives of the victims asked Biden not to attend memorial events this year unless he declassified government documents about the circumstances of the tragedy.
In July 2016, the House of Representatives released a previously classified 28 pages of an official report on the investigation of the attacks. The document said that a number of Saudi Arabians helped the terrorists with money. However, intelligence services have found no evidence of the involvement of the kingdom’s authorities in the attacks.
Recently, relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia have been darkened by the investigation into the murder of American journalist Jamal Hashokji on October 2, 2018, at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. In February, the Joe Biden administration released an intelligence report on the involvement of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, in the crime.
On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists (15 of them were citizens of Saudi Arabia) hijacked four passenger planes. Two of them crashed into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, one into the Pentagon in Washington, and another fell near the city of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, when passengers and crew tried to neutralize the invaders. About three thousand people were killed and more than six thousand were injured. The terrorist organization Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack.
The report on the results of the investigation of the terrorist attack was published on September 11, 2004. It said it found “no evidence that the Saudi government in general or senior Saudi officials individually funded” al-Qaeda attacks. However, the report noted that charities linked to Saudi Arabia may have funded terrorists.
On September 11, 2021, on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, commemorative events were held in the United States. Joe Biden and his wife Jill attended the commemoration ceremony in New York, as well as former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton with their wives.
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