Kingdom Enters a New Era

Dr. Nahed Taher - Challenging the Status Quo

KINGDOM ORDERS PROBE INTO 9/11 MONEY LINK 
By Abdul Karim Al-Faleh & Abdul Rahman Almotawa

JEDDAH/WASHINGTON, 25 November 2002 - A US official has denied reports that the two Sept. 11 hijackers were allegedly funded by Saudi personalities vindicating the Kingdom's stand that it had no link with the funding.

A Justice Department official said it was unthinkable that Saudi officials supported a terrorist organization which is inimical to them also.

Adel Al-Jubeir, foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard on Saturday denied that the Saudi government had sent money to two of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks and said his country was pursuing Al-Qaeda mercilessly. He said investigations were continuing to determine whether the Saudi money reached the hijackers and how.

US senators, meanwhile, piled pressure yesterday on the Bush administration to pursue investigation into the alleged funding of 9/11 hijackers by Saudi charitable donations.

Al-Jubeir told CNN from Riyadh that Saudi officials had worked closely with the FBI in investigating the funding allegations when they first emerged "seven or eight months ago".

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched a probe into whether charitable funds from the Kingdom had been funneled to two suspected hijackers who took part in the Sept. 11 attacks.

According to US sources, a congressional inquiry into issues related to last year's Sept. 11 attacks was investigating a possible money trail from the Saudi government to two of the hijackers, Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi. Asked if the Saudi government had sent money to the hijackers, Al-Jubeir replied: "There is no evidence to that effect whatsoever."

Newsweek magazine reported that payments of about $3,500 a month reached a Saudi student who knew the hijackers. The student received the money from an account in the name of Princess Haifa Al-Faisal, wife of the Saudi ambassador to Washington. Newsweek said the FBI had found a steady stream of payments to the family of one of the students, Omar Al-Bayoumi, beginning early in 2000. It said Bayoumi had befriended the hijackers in San Diego several months earlier.

Al-Jubeir said an investigation by Princess Haifa's office had shown that the money appeared to have reached the students via another person, a woman who was on a list of recipients of charitable and other donations regularly made by the princess. He said it was not clear who the woman was or how her name had come to be on the list of recipients. Investigations were continuing, he said.

"Princess Haifa is a very generous woman ... she donates large amounts of money to charities," Al-Jubeir said.

The Washington Post reported in its Sunday edition that Saudi officials had acknowledged that Princess Haifa gave money to the family of Osama Basnan to help defray medical costs. Bayoumi was a friend of Basnan, the paper said. Basnan is back in the Kingdom after being cleared of visa violation charges. He is receiving medical treatment in Jeddah.

The newspaper cited a Saudi Embassy official as saying that Princess Haifa had provided $15,000 to Basnan in 1998 and followed up with $2,000 monthly checks to Basnan's wife. The paper said Saudi officials said there was no evidence any of the money made it into the hands of the hijackers and that embassy officials were still poring over bank records to see if any checks sent to the Basnan family were endorsed over to Bayoumi.

Al-Jubeir said Saudi Arabia was working closely with the United States in the broader hunt for members of Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group, accused of carrying out the attacks. "I don't believe that there are any two governments that are cooperating more closely than your government and my government on this matter," Al-Jubeir said.

Al-Jubeir said the Saudis had thought the money trail issue was closed. "So we find it surprising that now out of the US Congress they repackage this and push it as new evidence, which leads me to believe that the people who are behind this are more interested in scoring political brownie points than they are in arriving at the truth," he said.   Source:  Arab News

FBI INVESTIGATING SAUDI MAN FOR LINKS WITH HIJACKERS 
By Staff Writer [Arab News]

WASHINGTON, 24 November 2002 - The FBI is investigating a Saudi man who provided assistance to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, the Los Angeles Times reported. Government sources said Friday there are some indications that high-level Saudi officials were providing money to at least one man, who in turn helped San Diego-based hijackers get established in the US by making rent payments and providing other assistance, the paper said.

But congressional and Justice Department sources said they disagree sharply over what to make of the apparent financial links. Sources said the issue of linkage remains a central and unresolved question before the joint congressional panel conducting an ongoing probe of intelligence failures surrounding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But FBI officials said they have investigated two Saudi men in connection with financial support provided to hijackers, and found no evidence of anything unusual. They determined that the men routinely helped newcomers from Arab countries with modest financial help.

"That is something we would be interested in," one congressional source said. Investigators "want to find out the complicity or knowledge of officials of a foreign government."

The matter has become a source of significant friction between congressional investigators and the Justice Department. Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been pressuring the Justice Department for weeks to declassify new information and evidence surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks.

In recent interviews, Graham has refused to discuss the nature of that evidence, but sources have said that it relates to connections between the San Diego hijackers and a foreign government.

The San Diego hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, were both Saudi citizens and were among those who commandeered a commercial jetliner that crashed into the Pentagon.

Congressional sources said lawmakers are frustrated that the FBI hasn't been more aggressive in pursuing the matter.

But a Justice Department official said the FBI has been aware of the evidence since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, and is convinced that it does not point to Saudi complicity in the attacks.

"It's a suspected linkage that isn't true," the official said, adding that the matter is so sensitive that many believe even airing the suggestions of Saudi links will significantly hamper the war on terrorism.

Officially, the FBI declined to comment Friday, citing its ongoing investigation into terrorism. Spokesman Steven Berry, reading from a prepared statement, said that the FBI continues to investigate a man who assisted the terrorists, Omar Al Bayoumi, and a second Saudi, Osama Bassnan.

Two high-ranking FBI officials said this week that there was no evidence that the hijackers received financial support from any foreign power while they lived in San Diego.

"There are absolutely no facts that would support that theory," said one official.

"We have people we know associated with the hijackers... but they didn't do things for the hijackers that they had not already done for 50 other Muslims" who came to San Diego from abroad, one of the FBI officials said.

Al Bayoumi first met Almihdhar and Alhazmi in late 1999 at a Los Angeles restaurant and later brought them to San Diego's large Muslim community, paying their first two months rent at an apartment in the neighborhood of Claremont.

Sources said FBI agents determined that the hijackers repaid Al Bayoumi and other individuals whatever money they had been provided during their time in San Diego. "The hijackers didn't need their money," said one source. "They had their other [financial] sources" for terrorism.

Records and interviews show that Al Bayoumi moved to San Diego in late 1995 or early 1996 and left for England in April 2001.  Source:  Arab News 

US 'INVESTIGATES SAUDI MONEY TRAIL' 
"The US authorities are investigating a possible financial link between the government of Saudi Arabia and some of the hijackers who carried out the 11 September attacks last year, according to American media reports. The investigation is focusing on money from a Saudi bank account to two of the hijackers - Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi - who were living in California in the year before the attacks. American officials caution there is no proof of involvement by the Saudi government - which says it is co-operating fully with US investigators, the reports say..." Complete report... 

KINGDOM DENIES REPORTS OF MONEY LINKS TO SEPT 11 
The Riyadh Daily - November