FBI reveals the identity of Saudi official suspected of supporting the 9/11 attacks

The United States’ FBI has revealed the identity of a former Saudi embassy official in Washington, who is suspected of providing strong support to two of the participants in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The Yahoo News website reported that the FBI had mistakenly revealed the identity of the mysterious official at the Saudi embassy in Washington.

The FBI unveiled the identity of the Saudi official in a document submitted by an FBI official in April to a federal court in response to a suit filed by the families of the September 11 victims accusing the Saudi government of complicity in the attacks.

Although the document obscures the name of the Saudi official, his name was incorrectly mentioned in one of the paragraphs.

It is related to the name “Musaed Ahmad Al-Jarrah,” a former official in the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs who was assigned to the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC between 1999 and 2000.

Al-Jarrah, who is not currently known, is similar to the American authorities who ordered two people to help Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khaled Al-Mihdhar to settle in the United States before the attacks.

Al-Hazmi and Al-Mahdar participated in the hijacking of the American Airlines plane that attacked the Pentagon headquarters, killing 125 people.

The news site said that Ahmed Al-Jarrah’s duties included overseeing the activities of Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees in the Kingdom in mosques and Islamic centers funded by Saudi Arabia within the United States.

The American authorities had investigated Fahd Al-Thamiri and Omar Al-Bayoumi to help the kidnappers, while the name of a third man was withheld, but he is believed to be a high-ranking government official in Riyadh.

The US authorities suspect that the surgeon was the “third man.”

The website quoted Brett Eagleson, a spokesman for the families of the 9/11 victims, saying the disclosure was a major breakthrough in the case filed years ago, adding that it provided for the first time a clear assurance that FBI agents investigating the attacks believed they had discovered a link between the kidnappers and the embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington.

“This shows that there is a complete government cover-up over Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the terrorist attacks,” said Eagleson, whose father was killed in the attacks.

The Ministry of Justice asked the court to withdraw the document from the public registry, as it indicated that it had been deposited incorrectly, according to “Yahoo News”.

According to observers, this disclosure actually revives many doubts about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s links to the 9/11 attacks, as part of the lawsuit filed by the families of the victims since 2003.

This call gained momentum in 2016 when the US Congress passed the GSTA law, which allows Americans to sue foreign governments for terrorism charges.

Saudi has consistently denied any connection to the 9/11 hijackers, and told the New York Times last January that “Saudi Arabia has been and remains a close and important ally of the United States in the war against terrorism.”

2976 people were killed as a result of those attacks, including 2,753 people targeting the World Trade Center and its vicinity in New York City in September 2001.

The series of attacks was considered “the bloodiest terrorist act” in world history.