DUBAI/WASHINGTON, 4 August 2003 — Omar Al-Bayoumi, a Saudi citizen at the center of US accusations of complicity in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks denied in an interview yesterday he was linked to the attacks, amid reports from Washington that the United States authorities were likely to interview him again.
“I sent a letter to Prince Naif, the interior minister, saying I was innocent of these charges...and now I am ready to answer any question in this regard with the presence of CIA or FBI investigators and Saudi investigators on Saudi land,” Al-Bayoumi told Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.
His name re-emerged in a US congressional report released last month which raised suspicions but reached no definite conclusion about whether Al-Bayoumi was connected to the Saudi government.
Meanwhile, US authorities plan to reinterview Al-Bayoumi, US Attorney General John Ashcroft said in Washington yesterday.
Officials want to question Omar Al-Bayoumi for a second time in light of new information, Ashcroft said in an interview on ABC’s This Week.
“As we develop information, sometimes we’ll learn something that we need to go back and ask to someone that we might not have thought important before,” Ashcroft said. Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopolous whether that meant the government planned to reinterview Bayoumi, Ashcroft responded “More or less.”
