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September 12, 2021 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released the first in a series of documents relating to its investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks and suspected Saudi government support for the hijackers, following an executive order from President Joe Biden.



The document, which dates back to 2016, provides a number of details about the FBI's investigation into the alleged logistical support that a Saudi consular officer and a suspected Saudi intelligence agent in Los Angeles allegedly provided to at least two of the men who hijacked the aircraft on September 11, 2001.   



In particular, it describes multiple connections and testimonies that prompted the FBI to suspect Omaral-Bayoumi, officially an Arab student in Los Angeles, suspected of being a Saudi intelligence agent who would later provide "travel assistance, accommodation and funding" to the two hijackers.  



Reference is also made to Fahad al-Thumairy, at the time a diplomat accredited to the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles who according to investigators led an extremist faction in his mosque.



The 16-page report, published on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, is the first investigative document to be disclosed since President Joe Biden ordered a review and declassification of materials that have remained secret for years. 



The Saudi Embassy in Washington said Wednesday that it "welcomed the release" of the FBI documents but that "any allegation of Saudi Arabia's complicity in the 9/11 attacks would be categorically false." 



Biden's executive order came after more than 1,600 people, injured or family members of victims of the attacks, wrote him a letter asking him to refrain from going to Ground Zero in New York to celebrate the 20th anniversary unless he had information on the role of Saudi Arabia published. 



Brett Eagleson, whose father, Bruce, was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center, said the declassification of the FBI material "accelerates our search for truth and justice." Jim Kreindler, a lawyer for the victims' relatives, argues that "the findings and conclusions of this FBI investigation validate the arguments we have brought into the dispute over the Saudi government's responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and show how al Qaeda has acted with Saudi support ", he added, citing phone calls between Saudi officials and al Qaeda agents and" accidental "encounters with the hijackers of the planes who would have had logistical support for accommodation and flight schools. 



The United States has investigated some Saudi diplomats and others with ties to the Saudi government who knew the hijackers after they arrived in the United States, as evidenced by already declassified documents, but the Commission's report on 9/11 2004 did not find "No evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials funded" the attacks devised by al Qaeda, while pointing out that Saudi charities may have sent money to the group.