A federal judge in New York issued an order to the Saudi government to enable the US judiciary to question 24 current and former officials about their potential knowledge of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
According to an article by investigative journalist Michael Isikoff on Yahoo News, among Saudi officials, Prince Bandar bin Sultan Abdulaziz, the former ambassador to Washington, and his chief of staff, Ahmed Al-Qattan.
The list also includes Musaad Ahmed Al-Jarrah, a former official at the Saudi embassy, Fahad Al-Thumairi, an official in the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and Omar Al-Bayoumi, who the US FBI suspects of working for Saudi intelligence.
Judge Sarah Netburn said that the documents - which the court obtained and most of them were not declassified - indicate that Prince Bandar had direct knowledge of the role assigned to the Thumairi kingdom and the diplomatic cover that was given to him.
The families of the victims of the attacks welcomed the court’s decision, which was issued on the eve of the attacks’s 19 anniversary, and considered it the most important decision taken since the attacks.
Attacks and Fallout
It is noteworthy that on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States - and behind it the world - was surprised by the live transmission on television screens of images of two hijacked civilian planes penetrating the walls of the World Trade Center towers in New York, leveling them and those in them to the ground, and another plane crashing into one of the wings of the Ministry of Defense (Pentagon) In Washington, it was badly damaged.
Among the repercussions of these attacks - in which nearly 3 thousand people of many nationalities and ethnicities were killed, and Al Qaeda later claimed responsibility for them - was a series of political and military events that changed the course of the history of entire peoples, and sparked cycles of wars and bloody acts of violence that killed millions of people between Dead, wounded, detained and homeless.