New video evidence obtained by the BBC reveals that Omar al-Bayoumi, a key figure in a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by 9/11 families against Saudi Arabia, maintained extensive connections to Saudi government officials and individuals with extremist ties. The footage, which the FBI acquired within days of the 2001 attacks, shows Bayoumi embracing Anwar al-Awlaki, who later became a leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Additional video captures Bayoumi and Awlaki engaged in paintballing exercises near San Diego alongside an official from Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs. The videos directly contradict Bayoumi’s assertions over the past 25 years that he was not involved with extremists or Saudi intelligence operations.
Bayoumi was arrested in the United Kingdom by the Metropolitan Police days after the attacks, and the videos were discovered among his possessions. Also recovered was a diagram depicting an aircraft with a flight descent equation, which multiple FBI agents received but was never provided to British interrogators holding Bayoumi in custody. The diagram was similarly withheld from some FBI agents investigating Bayoumi and from the 9/11 Commission, the independent inquiry into the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Bayoumi was never prosecuted, and both he and the Saudi government have consistently denied any involvement in or prior knowledge of the attacks. An investigation by BBC Panorama and Radio 4 found that the plane diagram was analyzed by the FBI’s New York office, yet a Department of Justice official stated he never received a proposal to prosecute Bayoumi based on the evidence. FBI agents in San Diego, where Bayoumi resided while in the United States, repeatedly requested evidence but did not receive most of it. Both San Diego and Los Angeles FBI offices were prevented from interviewing Bayoumi’s Saudi government contacts.
The 9/11 families’ lawsuit alleges that Saudi Arabia was complicit in the attacks and that Bayoumi assisted two of the 19 hijackers. Following a 2018 judicial ruling permitting the lawsuit to proceed, thousands of documents, videos, and photographs have been released to the court and declassified through executive action. Staff members on the 9/11 Commission objected to the conclusion that Bayoumi was unlikely to have been involved with extremists, leading the report to attribute this assessment to investigators who had direct dealings with him.
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