A deposition of 16 Saudi officials began this morning in the case brought by the families of victims of the 9/11 attack. The depositions are on Zoom (despite objections from some of the families who insisted on face-to-face depositions) due to the pandemic, and all of them will be sealed, but they did name the 16 Saudis being questioned. Mike Kelly of NorthJersey.com (part of USA Today), who has followed the case closely, reported that the two Saudis, Omar al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy, who helped two of the terrorists, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, get housing and flight training in California, are on the list. Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were known to the CIA as terrorist-linked, and had followed them through a meeting in Malaysia with others who were planning the attack, and then to Los Angeles, where, supposedly, they stopped tracing their movements because the CIA is not supposed to work within the U.S., but (also supposedly) did not notify the FBI.
Also on the list is the Saudi Embassy official, Musaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, who reportedly supervised Bayoumi and Thumairy in their meetings with al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi. Kelly wrote: “As this columnist reported exclusively last September, when al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi made their way to New Jersey — along with the 9/11 plot ringleader, Mohamed Atta, who flew to New Jersey from Florida — al-Jarrah made a special trip to a Jersey City mosque to deliver a $1 million donation from the Saudi government. Lawyers for the 9/11 victims want to question al-Jarrah on whether he met with al-Mihdhar, al-Hazmi and possibly Atta during the trip to New Jersey. They consider such a meeting — if it took place — to be the equivalent of a criminal conspiracy.”
