Saudi suspect denies aiding 11 September hijackers

04 August 2003
A Saudi named in a recently-published US report as being involved in the 11 September terrorist attacks, Omar al-Bayoumi, on 3 August denied any involvement and said that he was willing to face questioning from US investigators. The statement, made in an interview on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television station, follows intense publicity surrounding the release of a 900-page study by congressional experts into intelligence related to the attacks, in which Al-Bayoumi is named (MEED 31:7:03). A 28-page section on the financing of the terrorists was suppressed, while widely reported leaks indicated that the finger was pointed at Riyadh. The kingdom demanded that the pages be declassified in order that it could mount a defence, but the request was refused on the grounds of the need to protect sources and of ongoing criminal investigations. Al-Bayoumi was named in the published section of the report, as a suspected Saudi intelligence agent who assisted two of the hijackers to settle in the US. In spite of the row over publication, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on 30 July gave permission for the US security services to question Al-Bayoumi, who has since returned to Saudi Arabia.

'I am ready to sit with American investigators, whether from the FBI or CIA, in the presence of Saudi investigators and on Saudi soil,' Al-Bayoumi told Al-Arabiya, calling the allegations 'pure fabrication'. He has already been questioned in the US. Responding to the accusations that he helped the two hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hamzi, he said that his association with them was fleeting. 'I was on my way to Los Angeles with a friend to renew my passport [and] on our way back we stopped ata restaurant and heard two men talking,' he explained. 'I thought they were from a Gulf country and they told me that they were from Saudi Arabia -They lived near my house for two or three weeks, then later moved to another place.' The congressional report claims that Al-Bayoumi apppeared to have access 'to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia'.

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