JEDDAH, 7 August 2003 — Five FBI agents in the Kingdom will continue to question a Saudi national for his alleged ties with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, sources told Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News.
They said the FBI agents would question Omar Al-Bayoumi further in the presence of Saudi investigators at their office in Riyadh.
Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told a press conference here yesterday that the FBI agents came with the permission of the Saudi government.
Prince Saud said US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had requested the FBI interrogation.
“I told them that it depends on the approval of the Saudi government and of Bayoumi himself,” the prince told reporters, and the approval had strengthened the Saudi position against the congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks.
According to the report, Bayoumi had allegedly welcomed hijackers Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Al-Midhar when they moved to San Diego, California, just before the attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals.
Al-Hazmi and Al-Midhar are believed to have been at the controls of the hijacked American Airlines plane that was flown into the Pentagon.
Bayoumi was questioned in Britain shortly after the attacks, but was released and quickly left for Saudi Arabia.
The report added that Bayoumi had “access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia.” Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar ibn Sultan said allegations that Bayoumi was a Saudi agent were “blatantly false.”
