New 9/11 videos raise fresh questions over Saudi links

Watch: Did the FBI bury evidence of alleged Saudi agent’s role in 9/11?

Newly public videos and documents have raised fresh questions over Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national investigated after the 9/11 attacks, revealing links to Saudi officials and a close association with future al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki.

The footage, obtained by the BBC, was among evidence seized by British police days after the attacks. Yet key material was never fully shared with investigators, and Bayoumi was never prosecuted.

Stills from another video show Bayoumi and Awlaki embracing

Paintball footage puts Bayoumi beside future al-Qaeda leader

One video shows Bayoumi embracing Awlaki in 1998. Another shows the pair taking part in paintball sessions near San Diego alongside a Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs official, with participants wearing military clothing and shouting “Allahu Akbar”.

Investigators were later told some participants viewed the sessions as training for jihad. Awlaki would eventually become a leading figure in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula before being killed in a US drone strike in 2011.

Bayoumi denied knowing Awlaki when questioned in the 9/11 families’ lawsuit. The newly public footage directly contradicts that claim.

Grainy images from a paintballing session filmed by Bayoumi - with Anwar al-Awlaki top right

A plane diagram was found — then seemingly vanished

British police also discovered a handwritten diagram showing an aircraft and mathematical calculations relating to its height and distance from a target.

The material was passed between FBI agents in London but was not given to the detectives questioning Bayoumi at Paddington Green. It was later sent to the FBI’s New York office, but records tracing its analysis remain elusive.

A former Justice Department counter-terrorism official told the BBC that the evidence could have been significant, saying prosecutors had convicted people on less.

A note found in Bayoumi's home contained calculations about a plane's descent

FBI investigators say they hit repeated roadblocks

Agents in San Diego repeatedly requested evidence seized in Britain but received little of it. Their attempts to interview Saudi government contacts linked to Bayoumi were also blocked.

The FBI’s investigation was therefore left fragmented, with crucial evidence and potential witnesses separated from the investigators pursuing them.

The 9/11 inquiry never saw the full picture

The 9/11 Commission ultimately described Bayoumi as unlikely to have been secretly involved with Islamist extremists. But some staff members objected to that conclusion, while the Commission never saw the plane diagram, paintball footage or much of the other evidence gathered by British police.

Bayoumi and Saudi Arabia have consistently denied involvement in the attacks. The new disclosures, however, are likely to intensify scrutiny of why potentially significant evidence was never fully pursued in the years after nearly 3,000 people were killed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr4vn1e207go